Tag: Marisa DelFarno ’18
The Birth of Tragedy
by The Cowl Editor on November 2, 2017
Poetry
by Marisa DelFarno ’18
Ghost Stories
by The Cowl Editor on October 26, 2017
Portfolio
Chained
Run, hurry, faster! No, don’t look back, stop it! I fling my body around the corner into the darkness, my dripping hand sliding along the old marble wall. Down the stairs I glide, holding the wall to feel where I am. I reach the ground and a sudden tranquility streams through me. It’s over, done. I don’t have to think about it anymore. He’s not chasing me this time. I feel along the wall for the light switch, and as the light flickers to a steady brightness, I see flashes of my burgundy hands, still sodden with the warm liquid. He’s not even real, I tell myself. He’s nothing but fabricated by your mind! It’s not a crime when you’re not causing any harm to the living. But no! I can hear them coming. I run to my room, in the corner of this otherwise obsolete basement, and collapse into my bed to ease my accumulating terror. I close my eyes, waiting for the cloudy chimera of sleep to drag me to the shake that will awaken me on the other side. This time, however, I close my eyes to see nothing but a door that is locked and bolted.
—Erin Lucey ’20
Vapor
I was never scared of ghosts. Ever since I was just a kid, I had seen them watching peacefully on the walls or in the shadows. My mom would always praise me as some psychic, but all I could really do was watch them and sometimes read the words off their wispy mouths.
Horror movies always make ghosts look like demonic figures that want to possess and kill people, but that is not the case. Ghosts recognize that they had their time, and watch everyone they love have theirs. That is, until last night, where I met the soul that would murder anyone it could out of pure, unfiltered rage.
As the sun set and the shadows began to stretch across my old house, the spirits awakened and wished goodnights. They were all friendly to me, as one waved to me from afar. Suddenly, an unfamiliar mist wrapped itself around the hall, and the ghost beside me dropped. As I strained to see through the dark, the ghost’s connotation morphed to fear.
“Run,” the ghost mouthed as the mist entangled him. I fell backwards, trying to breathe, but realized that the mist had already grasped me too. I laid there writhing, suffocating—I could feel the vapor filling my lungs. The misty figure lowered its sullen face, revealing its wrath through its empty eyes and crooked laugh. My body went into spasms, my brain went into shock, and the world spun violently around me. It wanted me to have a slow death, I’m sure, but the neighboring ghosts wrapped their shadows around the mist. It screamed, threw a loud squealing tantrum, as I rolled and wheezed on the floor. As I was beginning to lose
consciousness, I watched the sickly hand reach for my face as he plunged into the floor with the others.
The paramedics came, and as they loaded my still body into the back of the ambulance, I heard them talk about a possible heart attack. I chuckled with what little breath I had left. Though I had never felt fear in the face of the undead, I felt nothing but it now, as my vision blurred silently into one cloud of vapor.
—Jay Willett ’20
Dreaming Versus Reality
“Who goes there? What do you want?” Nobody responds, but the piano keeps playing the same old tune. I can recognize it from anywhere. It is the song that my aunt played at my husband’s funeral. I decide not to wrack my brain thinking too much about the sole piano that continues to play. I ignore the melody and make my way up to my bed.
“Who goes there? What do you want?” I look around aimlessly. Nobody is there; I am extremely confused. I do not respond, and this makes the wandering voice angry. The invisible essence grabs my neck and holds me against the wall, as I’m being nailed to the cross. The voice then tells me, “We will be together forever.”
“Who are you?” I ask the voice, which snickers hysterically.
“Your husband is my love now in the Kingdom of Heaven. Stop wishing for him to come back. He never will for he is mine and for the rest of your existence, I will bless you with my presence.”
“Excuse me?” I ask the invisible spirit.
The spirit laughs uncontrollably and tells me that she will be back tomorrow.
Just then I open my eyes and look to my right. There my husband lays and the ghost of Halloween’s Past is nowhere to be seen. The next night I go to sleep and we encounter one another again. She apologizes for her crude introduction to me the previous night. Our conversation seems too realistic not to be true. I begin to wonder what the difference between dreaming and reality is.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
“I just found my husband lying lifeless on the ground.” I check for a pulse and there is none. “Come as fast as you possibly can.” As the tears fall from my eyes, the piano begins playing the harmonious melody and the spirit tells me that I have killed an innocent man through my thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. The voice laughs relentlessly as the paramedics carry my husband’s limp body out into the ambulance on the stretcher.
I continue to weep, and she continues to laugh. She comes back for many days, never failing to remind me that she is my husband’s new lover.
Maybe there is no true difference between dreaming and reality.
—Kiley McMahon ’20
Lost
The black, velvety water pillows the boat. My only company are a pair of oars and the lonesome sea. Nightfall flushes the sky into a moonless abyss, and the dim stars rupture through the clouds. Fog has invaded and heavily dusts the sea’s surface. My flame-lit lantern, my only source of light, fails to shine through the fog. The wind begins to snarl in my ear, the only sound besides my boat slowly wobbling in the otherwise stagnant water. The coldness of the wind reduces me to shivers and goosebumps. I am left guideless. There are no patches of land in the horizon. Just endless, open water. I have a strange hunch that I’ve been rowing in circles. Suddenly, a headache clouds my mind. I place both palms onto my temples. The vessels in my brain feel like they are going to erupt. What’s going on? Where am I? Why am I here? These are questions that rattle my mind. Overwhelmed, I turn my head to the side of my shoulder and gaze down below the murky fog. I illuminate the water with my lantern and look at my reflection. I see a face; a face that isn’t my own.
—Marisa DelFarno ’18
The Arrival on Europa
by The Cowl Editor on October 5, 2017
Portfolio
by Marisa DelFatno ’18
Another space race had begun. It was not with the Russians this time. Instead, it was against China. Predictable. One world power against another. We probably could have foreseen this. After being shelved decades prior, Human Outer Planets Exploration, also known by its corny acronym, HOPE, was no longer something purely conceptualized. It was now a reality, with a slight change in destination. Instead of traveling to Callisto, our actual safest bet, we were traveling to Europa.
NASA had finally received the proper funding they needed, and a small crew of six were plopped onto a ship, isolated deep in the fabrics of nothing but the dark abyss, traveling to Europa, one of the Galilean moons that is always rumored in the Popular Science written articles to be habitable for human life. A moon named after one of Zeus’ bazillion mistresses.
It would take six full years to get to Europa, and another six years back to Earth—a 12 year road trip. The whole purpose of our journey was simply to explore, and be the first to reach uncharted territory.
We already established ourselves to be sung about in future textbooks by going the furthest from Earth than any human in history, but that was not enough. We had to push the envelope one more time. One of us had to get out of the ship, and Frank was our guy. He was about to go on a moon with a temperature of -200 degree Celsius. Antarctica is a lot warmer than that. Like a lot warmer.
Also, Europa has enough radiation suitable for your run-of-the-mill, post-nuclear apocalypse film, though its sister, Callisto, has the least radiation out of all Jupiter’s moons. We wondered why we even chose Europa, a moon clearly hostile for human life, but I realized our sole endeavor was to triumph in this space race.
To top everything off, we lost connection to Earth four months ago. We tried everything to get communication back, from digging like dogs through the wiring in the walls to dissecting computers delicately with tweezers, but all we received was radio silence. Considering the advancement in technology, and the importance of the mission, we thought NASA would provide a solution from their end, but no. We got nothing.
Since at the time, we were four months away from Europa, there was no way we were going to stop and steer our way back home. We did not want to waste a total of 12 years of space travel. We had to reach our destination, and eventually we found ourselves parked in a spacecraft on the jagged surface of Europa, six years away from human civilization.
Aaron, the crew’s pilot, would always joke that a Chinese flag would be planted there when we arrived, much to the dismay of the perpetually serious Thomas and Patrick, who were navigator and commander, respectively. Brooke and I, the crew’s technicians, would lighten up and laugh, but ultimately we could not fully immerse ourselves in humor.
Instead, we shared the same sense of unease and worry. Either my nerves or the freeze-dried stuff we were subsisting on with its endless expiration date made my stomach feel hollow. We arrived, and we had to make sure protocol, procedures, etc. were all set. In fact, we were nearly four hundred million miles from Earth; or in other words, four hundred million miles from any source of help.
However, despite the stress and tension, we still could not help but soak in our surroundings. It was like being in one of those stunning, space themed screen-savers, or watching a sci-fi film with topnotch, realistic CGI on a mountainous screen. Seeing Jupiter, so massive, so close to little Europa, was something so indescribable that words did not do any justice.
Back on Earth, we have all seen that strawberry moon that appears around June, and we easily got astonished by that, but our view of Jupiter surpassed that coolness by millions. The scariest fact was that Jupiter’s beauty mark, that colossal hurricanic spot, could easily fit two Earth sized planets. One Earth alone can comfortably fit in it like a baseball in a glove and here we were, compacted like some old sardines, getting the full perfect view of it, between swallowed by Jupiter’s magnitude. When confronted by such immensity, it’s like being an ant crawling on the sidewalk in front of the Empire State Building.
It was showtime. Frank was fully equipped; his suit almost cumbersome due to all its gadgets and padding. He was so rigid and compressed by the EMU that he looked like the Michelin Man. But he was ready…I think. His ever-so quiet and mysterious demeanor was haunting. He stood there stoic like a statue, waiting to be released from the ship.
Brooke placed her hand on the door latch, a concerned look in her doe eyes directed towards Frank, easily conveying the two words “Good luck.” Thomas placed his hands on Frank’s padded shoulders, another expression of good luck. Patrick was adjusting Frank’s suit like a mom adjusting a kid’s winter coat. And Aaron just had to shout out, “break a leg!”
Frank and I exchanged looks. I smiled and wished him luck. Frank was still quiet, but he sheepishly smiled back. He held his bulky helmet in his hands like a pumpkin, took a quick gaze at it before he plopped it on his head. Only our own reflections were seen, our anxious faces, almost on par with Munch’s Scream painting. Frank’s face could not be seen beneath his murky helmet.
Brooke released the latch and Frank, in his clunky suit, went through the narrow, cramped hallway, shutting the door that separated us from him, and opened another one to free himself from the ship. For a moment, my anxiety almost switched to jealousy, seeing Frank released from the ship while we looked on like caged animals, but then again, given the weight of the current situation, I was glad that all I got to do was watch.
He was out. Quickly, we all glided towards the monitor to watch Frank take the Armstrong step out of the ship. He raised his right foot and lodged it onto the icy, eerily pristine, ground before the amazement could hit us, and he did the same with his left foot. His leap was, of course, slightly inelegant and clumsy, but he slowly familiarized himself to the gravity, making little leaps and jumps to get himself around. The cabin, though brimming with apprehension, roared with cheers.
Frank hopped around for a little, but still was silent. I could not envision the awe he must had been experiencing, the surreal sensation of treading on the raw, unexplored grounds of Europa. It was like his whole life was building up for this moment, to be the first man to lay a foot on Europa. In the monitor, he started to camouflage himself along the icy rocks; his body slowly fading as he walked away like a cowboy in an old, black and white, gritty western.
The cabin was silent now. I could almost hear the glimmer of sweat dripping from everyone’s forehead, in addition to the sounds of our hearts pounding so heavily. We had the dial on max. Thomas shot me a slight grimace, and Patrick had his shaky hand on the radio, ready to adjust it, when the awaited beep came through. Everyone’s muscles froze, with our ears giving full attention. We hovered over the radio like a child hovering over an unopened present. The already mousey Frank was almost voiceless. My gut clenched. His response was nothing more than two repeated sentences.
Man’s first words on Europa: “My God. My God.”
Brooke, hastily plucking the mouthpiece of her headset, immediately started to shout, “What?! What is it!?”
Frank, taking a long, almost unnecessary pause, quivered back. “We lost.”
On Social Media
by The Cowl Editor on September 21, 2017
Poetry
by Marisa DelFarno ’18
Full Circle
by The Cowl Editor on August 31, 2017
Poetry
by Marisa DelFarno, ’18
Portfolio Staff
What comes full circle?
A raindrop descending into the ocean.
Ice meeting heat’s devotion.
The caged electric flow in a closed circuit.
The sour workings of karma’s service.
We all obey this motion
like the path has been previously woven,
but, does deviation have any purpose?
Well, maybe there is a fixed design,
and trust has to be settled on something unseen;
a route that is inescapable, curved, and never-ending,
and everything is harmonized, intertwined,
blending like the ripples in the sea;
a flow that we are all attending.
Subordinate
by The Cowl Editor on April 6, 2017
Poetry
by Marisa Delfarno ’18
Portfolio Staff
Almost in perfect unison, they are all lined up,
Postured tall and stately, regal and proud,
And their trunks plumped with life.
Adorned and fruitful while poised with green,
While I am green — in a different fashion.
A celestial ray of light reaches out to them,
Crowning them all with a luminous halo.
And then there is me — obscured.
The jaded, broken vessel. The old soul.
The uncharted, no man’s land.
Aging, languishing, and slouching;
I succumb to the reign of decay.
And I am positioned beneath them,
Always staring up at them.
The hollowing tree stump I am.