By Alyana Seggi
The dried wood, leaves, and October 2015 newspaper crackle and snap flares into the air. Aromas of pine and smoke drift from orange rind flames. Girls laugh while they shove fluffy marshmallows onto jagged sticks, soon to be combined with Hershey’s chocolate and honey graham. In a matter of seconds, white is charred to black and singed with the orange rind that must be blown out. It is still warm out. The sky turns to dusk, then to black. A figure, jagged, small, and dark, swoops through the windless trees and targets my head. Vermin darting through the air perform sacrilegious acrobatics for the stars. They must smell my fear, my sweat, and the s’mores. Continuous evil formations of flying patterns loop, dive like bombs dropping in the firelight. Meanwhile, the girls laugh and tell stories of embarrassment, but I have a bandit to my left, to my right, consumed by crooked wings. Tallies in sight, spike at two o’clock, time for Maverick to bug out.
Alayna Seggi is from Erie, Pennsylvania and attended Fort LeBoeuf High School. She is majoring in English education and will graduate in the spring of 2021. She plans to attend graduate school and earn a degree in school counseling while simultaneously teaching. She played volleyball for three years, and in her sophomore season helped her team secure an AMCC championship and NCAA appearance. This is her first publication. She’d like to continue studying creative writing at some point as well. High Roller, Santa Date, Working with Ameera