Emerson Best is a rising junior at Park City High School, a National Honors Society inductee and a Park Record intern.
She is also the coordinator of PCHS Writes, a writing club at Park City High School that partners with The Park Record during the school year. Club members submit short stories every month or every other month and the winner is published in the newspaper.
The following stories by Best are examples of how the club encourages different styles and genres.
PCHS Writes will take the summer off, and Best will revive it in autumn. For information about the club, email [email protected].
Greek Myths
By Emerson Best
Cassandra
I stare at the blank stone wall across from me, my eyes tracing the long-memorized cracks. A faint breeze whistles through the window, carrying the ragged sounds of screams. I resist the urge to go to the hole in the stone, to scream, to shout and plead and pray — to do any of the things I’ve done in the past. It never made a difference.
I feel the old rage well up, tasting bitter in my mouth. Do you believe me now? The words ricochet in my head, just as desperate as the first time I screamed them, as they dragged me here, locked me away, saying I was a danger to the city. My city. Doomed to fall for my brother’s weakness and poor decisions.
That’s the common denominator, though, isn’t it? Men, gods — always taking things that weren’t offered, seizing what was never theirs to claim. They call it destiny or favor. I call it theft. I call it cowardice dressed up as fate, violence wrapped up in golden crowns.
I watched my city fall before it ever happened. I watched the wall collapse, the hundreds of thousands of deaths, the ceaseless violence. I tried to warn them. I told my brother that if he took Helen, then Troy would fall. He didn’t believe me. No one does.
That is my curse, after all. My penalty for not giving myself to Apollo, for refusing to sacrifice my dignity. You will maintain your foresight, but I curse you never to be believed. Every prophecy you have, if you speak it aloud, will be laughed at. Scorned. They will call you mad.
I have seen kings trade their sons like cattle, calling it strategy. I have watched priests slaughter trembling animals over their altars in the name of faith, insisting the gods smile over the blood. Men raise their voices, their swords, paint their fields red in the name of honor and have the nerve to call me insane.
It’s convenient, isn’t it? To call a woman mad when her words cut too close to the marrow of the hypocrisy they are too blind to see. They said I insulted the gods. As if Apollo were some pathetic boy whose ego would shatter if I refused his touch. He disguised his hunger as a blessing, his lust wrapped in pretty words and promises, and expected me to be grateful.
When I refused to bow, he did what all powerful men do– twisted his words, made sure my voice had no weight, so that it could hurt no one but me.
Now, he sits and hides in Olympus, refusing my prayers, my pleas. My brother hides behind his pretty, stolen wife, my father hides behind his alter, my captor hides behind his armies and armor. Cowards, all of them.
They will say that it was destiny that brought Troy down, that burned its walls and its people. I know better. It was arrogance and greed. I tilt my head back, eyes closed, and I watch the Greeks roll their horse inside the walls, the vision flickering into reality. I feel my lips curl in a smile. It won’t be long.
Do you believe me now?
Icarus
When people tell you the story of Icarus, they tell it to you as an example of moderation. Don’t take too much, don’t feel too much, don’t fly too close to the sun. They say his name as a warning. 100 thousand tones over 100 thousand years. Disparaging. Annoyed. Reproachful. Critical. Chiding, severe, frustrated. Empty.
Don’t be like Icarus, child. Don’t fly too close to the sun.
They forget that Icarus was imprisoned for his father’s genius. They forget that Icarus was clumsy, that he could never please his father. They forget, too, that the sky was his first taste of freedom.
So I wonder if perhaps it was not that Icarus did not listen to his father, but he simply longed to be his own man for the first time. I wonder if he finally felt graceful, up there in the sky. Daedalus had promised that they would soar, after all.
I wonder what he thought in those last moments before he fell. I wonder if he was afraid, feeling the hot wax on his skin and knowing he was going to fall. There is a much larger part of me that wonders if he laughed as he fell. If he bared his teeth to the sky and the sun and the utter destruction of himself and screamed his wild, feral joy into the sky.
I wonder if he laughed because he knew even then, in his last moments, as he was falling, blazing, into the dark embrace of the sea, that to fall means you have soared, and surely no one has ever flown as high.
Daedalus had told him to stay away from the water, lest the sea spray weigh down his wings. People forget that part, too. He was told to go between the extremes. But what is life without extremes? In our emotions, our fear and rage and desolation, our bright, naked joy. How do we measure the rest, without extremes? How do we find that middle, that perfect Goldilocks zone, without first finding the hot and cold, the good and bad?
I wonder, too, about Apollo. There was a poem I read once, about how the sky turned dark and dotted with stars after Icarus fell, feathers drifting around him like snow, into the sea. I wonder if Apollo could not bear to face the destruction he had caused to one who had loved him so purely.
Sometimes I wish I were Icarus. I wish I knew the feeling of his flight, the wind in his hair and his perfect, limitless freedom. I wish I knew the feeling of his fall, too. The trails of wax melting on his skin, his feathers drifting down around him. I think that is when he must have felt most alive, as he was falling.
I envy that, the fierce, feral knowledge of his own life, the kiss of the water as it closed over him, which must have made his momentary freedom so much sweeter. I do not envy his death; only the freedom it must have provided.
Do not be like Icarus, who fell.
Be like Icarus, who flew.