BrainScramble Magazine. The world through our eyes. Toronto & Berkeley. Latest BSToronto i17: MEND, out now.
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How to Fix a Girl with a Half-Broken Neck
Artwork by Jessica Gerardi A Reimagining of The Green Ribbon Jenny always meets the Dressmaker in the backroom of his shop. It’s quite small—just like the rest of the store—with heaps of dresses from last season collecting dust in the corner. A spindle sits in another corner, and in the centre of the room,…
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Ode to November
Artwork by Ava Maggioni I had the first depressive episode of my life in the fifth grade, beginning promptly as November’s grey rolled in. It was a sort of dissatisfaction I’d never experienced before, the days bleeding together and fuzzing out until they felt like nothing. I fuzzed out into nothing. I remember…
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IT’S TIME WE WAKE UP
Artwork by Danni Nguyen Think of last summer—between the daily drone of mindless work, courses, and life events, something was lurking in the air. Something that Toronto would have never experienced under normal conditions: an omen of our future summers. It coated our streets with a grey fog that thickened the air. Our sun…
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rehearsal
Artwork by Aarushi Gupta There are eyes in my memory. In my muscles, in the corners of rooms where no one sits. Even air enters me uninvited. The world presses its thumbprint into my wax, and I melt into the shape they’ve named woman. Someone speaks her name as if they know it,…
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Letter From Founder: Berkeley, i4
This will be my last semester as President of BrainScramble Magazine. Even as a writer, I come up empty, time and time again, attempting to translate this feeling into words. I remember my sweat-slicked hands as I hit “publish” for the first time, sixteen and scared, but the eager beat of my heart rich with…
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The Waiting Years/Rain Swallower
He jokes she’s lucky she doesn’t have to call a carpenter, She can no longer walk on her own, she tells him he could have been a doctor.
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Checkmate
I thought about that night on his living room floor, crouched around the chessboard. His eyes flicked from the board to mine, his chain dangling over the marble. “Think about that one again,” he said, motioning to my latest move. It was our third game, after I had begged him to play me again. I…
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The Fate of the Cherry
This love? This is what we were made for. Love is, undoubtedly and infinitely, the best thing that we as humans are capable of. It is everywhere; it is in our friends and the sun and art and food and the leaves and the world. And if you put that love out there – if…
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On Being an Overzealous First Year
The ordeal was a rude shock to the system; a reminder that life is more than JSTOR articles and fanciful mental lists. And yet, it was emblematic of something I couldn’t ideate or catalog. That experiences can’t be gamified, that life doesn’t fit neatly into checklists. That sometimes, your niche academic interests turn into half-haunting,…
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Chimera
Kneeling on the wooden deck of the boat, legs sticky with seawater and fruit juice, she looks up and watches as the sky above her seems to quiver once, twice, and then begins to slowly peel away. Beyond the flaking sun, she can make out the fuzzy shadow of her ceiling fan, the faint glow…
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Transmission Log #498
Bea, I’m coming home.
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Aluminum Lungs
Ding ding ding!
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From the Slaughterhouse
The “brother” is a fascinating animal. Despite common assumptions, he does not always find his herd by being the most brazen or horrifying of his species. No—to reach full maturity, his life cycle necessitates ritual humiliation. His existence begins not as a conqueror, but as the conquered. Instinct propels him to seek the approval of…
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Verona, 1942
The tanks left tracks in the snow. They rolled down the street with no destination, their only goal was to announce their authority.
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sodapop!
He retrieved the ball and kicked it across the field lacklusterally. rather than return to his rest beneath the sycamore tree, he rushed towards the boys. a thick sole of memory foam compressed itself against the can. and just like that, there went my crush.
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Tight as a Garlic Fist
And, as we prepared a meal together every night, garlic was solely crushed one way in my childhood household: a hyper-specific kitchen item, sold for one use and one use only: crushing garlic cloves. And boy, did we use it.
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Limerence
10:36. Damn it. Once again, I have overstayed the welcome of my car, forgetting the impermanence of my 15 minute break.
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MothMouth
was no longer just myself. My skin was full of openings, and the day poured through them freely.