Lunch Ticket
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Issues Archive
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Genre Archive
      • Creative Nonfiction
      • Essays
      • Fiction
      • Flash Prose
      • Interviews
      • Lunch Specials
      • Poetry
      • Translation
      • Visual Art
      • Writing for Young People
  • About
    • Mission Statement
    • Lunch Ticket Staff
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Achievements
    • Community
    • Contact
  • Weekly Content
    • Friday Lunch Blog
    • Midnight Snack
    • Amuse-Bouche
    • School Lunch
  • Contests
    • Diana Woods Award in CNF
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
    • Gabo Prize in Translation
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
    • Twitter Poetry Contest
      • 2021 Winners
      • 2020 Winners
      • 2019 Winners
  • Submissions
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Runaway Regression

November 10, 2021/ Ahsan Butt

It suddenly comes back to you late one night as you struggle with a story about a haunted house. You’re writing in that way where you’re fixated on the next line, but nothing feels right, because deep down you’re expecting that next line to fix everything that’s wrong.

You’re in your apartment bedroom, lit by your laptop, Pandora-supplied tunes leaking out of its cheap speakers. What starts it all is hearing Soul Asylum’s Runaway Train. You haven’t heard the song in almost two decades, but as soon as that scratchy voice begins singing, almost crooning, the video comes to mind—those missing children. You YouTube the video to be sure, and yes, you’re right. Interspersed with anguished shots of the band and melodramatic yet disturbing dramatizations are pictures of real missing children. School photos, glamor shots, candids, all sepia-saturated, each followed by a name and “missing since” caption in white text on a black background.

The video came out in June 1993, you would have been nine. Your teenage sister listened to a bit of Alternative. You associated it with the sadness you sensed in her. The way she went quiet listening was the same way she went quiet with the family sometimes, her being suddenly elsewhere.

You now remember watching the video with her, a lot. Despite its staginess, the video moves you, the older you watching in the dark on your laptop. When the first photo appears just as the chorus rings out, and there’s these big eyes and big dimples and cute teardrop earrings—”Wilda Mae Benoit, missing since 1992”—it’s all startlingly real.

Feeling moved suggests that prior to that feeling you were in a state of stillness, inertia, maybe even numb. The sensation is as much about the emotion that’s being felt as the surprise that you’re feeling it. You know you aren’t feeling what nine-year-old you felt. Nine-year-old you wasn’t numb the way adults become. Nine-year-old you wasn’t moved by those photos; you were scared. All these people missing from homes that, at least from the photos, seemed just like yours.

And you were already a scared child, weren’t you? Lying awake whole nights, staring vigilantly at your window, bathed in a light that was almost purple. You can’t remember all the things that churned in that mind those nights, there must have been so many—how you’ve managed not to think about them for so long is unsettling—but you are somehow certain that one of those things was a moment from a trailer.

You go to YouTube before you know what to type, but by the time the cursor is in the search bar, your fingers already know—Fire in the Sky. It was released in March 1993. You’re surprised by the ponderous opening voice-over and the laser-show anatomy. You don’t remember it all, but then a beam of light hits a young denimed man like a spasm, his shoulders cracking back in a rigid paralysis, and then again, from overhead, and you see his mouth hang uselessly open and his eyes roll up into his head. This you remember, though it still isn’t the moment. There’s a frantic sequence in which the denim man’s gurney ride down a hospital hall is spliced with him being dragged through some metallic tunnel; then he’s on a table and spindly aliens throw a sheet over him, though in the next shot, we see it’s not a sheet, it’s clung to his arm like a pink membrane, and his fingers twitch against its webbing. Then the moment comes: his upper body and head wrapped in this new skin, he writhes into a suctioned scream.

A good sequence. It doesn’t terrify you now, but you can see how it had. The story was based on the account of Travis Walton and his six friends, though one can assume loosely, since the director chose not to use Travis’ account of the abduction and drew instead from his own dreams. Whatever the source, the abduction scene was quite an escalation of what you’d seen. Your family used to watch Unsolved Mysteries together, which frequently featured UFO encounters including dramatizations, but those scenes had nothing on Travis screaming into the void.

But more than an escalation, perhaps it was a culmination. Unsolved Mysteries and other nineties  shows sometimesplayed actual audio from hypnotic regression sessions. Hypnosis was how many people came to believe they had repressed abduction experiences. Some accounts were exacting and clinical, while others were pained or hysterical to the point of collapse. These sessions felt real to you, beyond science. The voices didn’t seem to be performing. They seemed glimpses of a raw private self that you, at nine, already believed in. You knew even loved ones didn’t say aloud the things they felt most deeply. How shocking it must have been then, to witness Travis screaming in his alien skin.

So much had felt real to you at nine. It seems naïve to assume those fears you had are gone now, mere memories you can deconstruct with distanced fascination, as if they’re art objects.

You can’t remember what happened the rest of that night you were trying to write, where the remembering went from there, or what came of that story. You doubt you ever came up with the next line.

Ahsan Butt, Author Headshot
Ahsan Butt was born in Toronto, is of Pakistani descent, and currently lives in Los Angeles. His short-fiction and essays have appeared in West Branch, Barrelhouse, The Massachusetts Review, The Normal School, SmokeLong Quarterly, Blue Minaret, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Also, he is currently a Senior Editor at South Asian Avant Garde: A Dissident Literary Anthology (SAAG).

Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published the second Friday of every month.

Today’s course:

How to Kill a Cat, or How to Prepare for CATastrophe

March 10, 2023/in Blog / Meghan McGuire
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/51458407-FB7D-4C1F-AD98-9E3181F097C9.jpg 2288 2288 Meghan McGuire https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Meghan McGuire2023-03-10 11:55:512023-03-08 12:08:20How to Kill a Cat, or How to Prepare for CATastrophe

The Night I Want to Remember

December 16, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Sanaz Tamjidi
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/paul-volkmer-qVotvbsuM_c-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 1704 2560 Sanaz Tamjidi https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Sanaz Tamjidi2022-12-16 16:12:142022-12-16 16:12:14The Night I Want to Remember

From Paper to the Page

November 18, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Annie Bartos
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/IMG-7101-1-scaled-1.jpg 2560 1920 Annie Bartos https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Annie Bartos2022-11-18 12:27:332022-12-07 19:27:42From Paper to the Page

More Friday Lunch Blog »

Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

On Such a Full Sea Are We Now

March 17, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Jemma Leigh Roe
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/JLR.jpeg 1204 1042 Jemma Leigh Roe https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Jemma Leigh Roe2023-03-17 11:55:192023-03-20 12:27:25On Such a Full Sea Are We Now

The Russian Train

February 24, 2023/in Amuse-Bouche / Cammy Thomas
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/06BA84B9-9FF6-4D6C-97E3-9F02075E851D.jpeg 2042 1609 Cammy Thomas https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Cammy Thomas2023-02-24 14:30:592023-02-24 11:40:48The Russian Train

Still Life

October 31, 2022/in Amuse-Bouche / Daniel J. Rortvedt
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/827C31B5-92AE-4C32-9137-3B4AED885093-scaled.jpeg 2560 1920 Daniel J. Rortvedt https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Daniel J. Rortvedt2022-10-31 11:59:312022-10-30 21:59:49Still Life

More Amuse-Bouche »

School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SL-Insta-Brendan-Nurczyk-2.png 1500 1500 Brendan Nurczyk https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Brendan Nurczyk2021-05-12 10:18:392022-02-01 13:24:05I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-FB-Isabella-Dail.png 788 940 Isabella Dail https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Isabella Dail2021-04-28 11:34:132021-04-28 11:34:13A Communal Announcement

Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-Insta-Abigail-E.-Calimaran.png 1080 1080 Abigail E. Calimaran https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Abigail E. Calimaran2021-04-14 11:22:062021-04-14 11:22:06Seventeen

More School Lunch »

Word From the Editor

Our contributors are diverse and the topics they share through their art vary, but their work embodies this mission. They explore climate change, family, relationships, poverty, immigration, human rights, gun control, among others topics. Some of these works represent the mission by showing pain or hardship, other times humor or shock, but they all carry in them a vision for a brighter world.

More from the current editor »
Current Issue »

Connect With Us

lunchticket on facebooklunchticket on instalunchticket on twitter
Submit to Lunch Ticket

A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.

Get Your Ticket

We’ll keep you fed with great new writing, insightful interviews, and thought-provoking art, and promise with all our hearts never to share your info with anyone else.

Newsletter Signup
Copyright © 2021 LunchTicket.org. All Rights Reserved. Web design and development by GoodWebWorks.
Scroll to top