“Literary Mimesis; or Plagiarism Pays.” Karen Craft. Product Description: It’s only cheating if you get caught. We’ve never been caught. What we do is you. We do your style. You send us sample copies of papers you have actually written in the past. (We require a minimum of 5 papers and two weeks to plan our approach). Ideally, please and thank you, send us your packet four to six weeks in advance of your essay’s due date, adjusting accordingly for difficulty and length requirements. We charge 0.09 USD per word ($450 for a 5,000w. paper). Our employees are frustrated, MFA holding novelists sick of rejection on the open market who’ve made a nice living for themselves in this peculiar industry catering to lower-level undergraduates— those from money/of money/with money (to burn) at elite public and private American universities. These people, our “fixers,” possess an uncanny ability to sound like you, fast, getting you the grade you need while saving you valuable party time that would otherwise be wasted in writing papers. We scrupulously avoid even the hint of foul play, hiding all misbehavior from schoolmarmish professors.

Disclaimer: We do not guarantee good grades, only authenticity.

If you’re a D student, we will make you sound like a D student. We save you time writing papers you don’t want to write, WE ARE NOT MIRACLE WORKERS. Plus, consider, lowkey and just straight up FR: if you are a D student and we turn in an A paper for you that kind of, like, um, ya know, defeats the whole purpose of our service. It’s like some scumbag election fraud specialist who deserves all he gets in terms of fines and punishments and punitive reparatory measures measured out to the final inch and centimeter deciding to stuff six hundred fake ballots in one mailbox as if the people picking up the early voting would take this and nod, ‘sounds good, looks like 600 voters do live at this address.’ Idiot. We are not idiots. 

Here’s a two-pronged, AB sample from one of our best, ‘007,’ writing for the aforementioned D student on the following topic: The Secession Crisis during the American Civil War. Look and see for yourself how effortlessly 007 is able to sound like a student who barely passes via two distinct styles: first, the classic jackass frat moron and, in the B sample, the over-eager virtue signaling present-imprisoned speech puritan. 

*Option C included for the rarely ordered but elite-pricing ‘true F’ paper. 

1. “The North was, like, nah, dis bullshit, yeah? That the South was, like, bein’ all unconstitutional and shit, yu-heard? Like, peep this, did we the people, the United States of America make somethin poppin or no? Did we all agree we be ride and die no matter what back in 1776 or no? The North was like, nah, hole up! Yeah, of course, you make a country, you make a Union, yo, for the purpose of being together forever, like a marriage and no, I mean no one, nah, gets married while at the same time being like we probably gon get divorced. And so the North was obviously tight in their arguments. The South did not, nah, never, they had no right to do like they done did.”
2. “Within current paradigms of historiographical analysis a propos the rebellion of patriarchal, sexist and racist slaveholding white men what is often unfortunately overlooked is the intersectional and overt sexism and oppression of female-identifying citizens in the Northern United States of America. Abraham Lincoln is patient zero in this regard. If they, Lincoln, really cared about equality and egalitarianism why, in the wake of their belated Emancipation Proclamation regarding of African descent African-Americans in America following the anti-pacificism, potentially pandemic seeding protest at Antietam did they not also (politically) emancipate female-identifying citizens? We can sadly see the portends of this gross oversight during the entitled white cisgender toxic male revolt of late 1860, early 1861.” 
3. “So, huh, the war. Civil. Kay. I, my TA, Jenny, bro, right, amirite tho? I remember her saying last week son it was like in the 1830s no wait the 1380s. Prof, she was also talking about hitting the club all weekend w/ her boyfriend Chad at the club. Also TBH I was on the bong a bit too much the last few days and my dog ate all my edibles, so…but don’t worry it’s all good. Okay. Abra-hammered Lincoln (get it?) once upon a time…”
   
   

Profit: $320,100.00

You turn away from the screen. You half-shrug. Time for a cliché to cut the tension, guaranteed to make everyone grunt and shake their heads in pseudo-profound melancholy. This has happened before, you begin, it will happen again. Suddenly she’s shaking your arm, yelling at you to shut up. Who cares about before, who cares about again? She screams. It’s happening to my sister, damn you. It’s happening right now. Everyone squirms. Everyone glares at you, as though you had flown the plane, had pulled the trigger, had dropped the bomb that pulverised her sister’s neighbourhood in a land far enough away that no one really cares, even when - well, even now. All over the world, someone is shaking a sputtering stranger, screaming, it’s happening to my sister, damn you. It’s happening right now. ​

Here are the fuming chairs of a round table made rectangular by gilt-edged name-plates. Here is the world that promises sanctuary to strangers like me, that promises to live and die by the truth. Here are the words that arrest you, first when this world makes that promise and then when it breaks that promise. Here is a pen, announcing and denouncing things, until the fingers holding it are twisted in the darkness by shadows with muffled footfalls. The pen is your pen, the fingers are your fingers, but you cannot / will not / must not tell the story thus; so you say instead: here is the pen that ... The pen stops, hovers over a blot for one flicker of the guttering candle, then rises and moves away from the page. A massacre vanishes from history. ​

When I told you I didn’t mean to ruin everything, all you said was it’s fine. I’m really quite mad at you for that, because I already thought that I had really fucked it this time but to know that you thought that, too, was just, like, enough to make me willingly institutionalize myself. For like three whole months I never asked you what this was because I already knew: this was your dentist tongue and how it straightened my teeth one by one and reminded me to floss when we were finished and this was your doctor fingers around my muscles and you made them pop like cereal and this was how you never drop anything you hold but when I dropped my ice cream cone on the floor of your car you let me share yours, instead of getting mad, and usually you’d be mad but that day, you were just like, you idiot, and I was like, that’s me, I’m the idiot, I literally would have gotten the word idiot tattooed on myself. When you sucked the rum raisin out of the tiny triangle left of your cone, you told me that you had a cold and didn’t want to kiss that cold into me, and I was like yeah, it might look weird if we were both sick and I didn’t kiss you even though I wanted to drain the rum raisin out of your tongue like we were reversing a vaccine. I told the nurses at the clinic about how I want to get my teeth into every part of you. They had pitiful eyes and they were like, He sounds lovely, and then they were like, You have chlamydia.

seven
My feet are small enough to be swallowed by sand when I walk by the tide. We woke at 5:30 when light whispers sunrise. Face swollen like a raft, I shimmy sweatpants over my ankles and put on my polka-dotted blouse. Her ashes are held in an urn that is ornate because she loved ornate things like costume jewelry and impression glass and ceramic figurines. All her life she wanted to swim with the dolphins; feel water smooth against her body. So my uncle waded me into the water and we poured her slow into the waves; our tears dripping to the sea like rain and the water washing us with goodbye.
 
eight
My childhood was ruled by water that matted my hair and salted my stomach. No one has ever loved me like the sun on the Chesapeake Bay. Days that left me freckled and flushed for nights stroked with firefly butts. When we were young and violent, we used to rub their luminescence on our clothes and say “we’re glowing.” I liked being dyed different. On Sundays in Sam’s pool, we’d swim until our hair turned chlorine-aquamarine. To shimmer like mermaids, we stretched hair-ties around our ankles and rolled our bodies like fish. Our nails were pink like scales and goggles were glasses that stretched plastic walls into sea-kingdoms.
 
twelve
I’m craving ham & cheese sliders on a boat that smells of sunscreen and potato chips. Mayo is a luxury so we eat them dry while my body sinks into plastic chairs and I stare at jellyfish tentacles that remind me of cotton candy. Sand grits my fingernails while I search for sharks' teeth. Brackish water: my fountain of youth. I jump portside to let small waves lap my body. I jump portside to let small waves settle me silent and swallowed.
 
fourteen
Canoes crochet through weeds and foam and we become explorers. After eight pm we go braless and smoke wet weed that makes us gum-grin and giggle. We speak in riddles and skinny dip. Our mouths like vaults; each tooth a safe rooted in gums stuck to secrets and saliva. Our tongues lusting to speak half-truths, we avoid lockjaw by gossiping about our first blowjobs and how we can improve. Mascara drips below our eyes and makes us ominous in the dark but we’re too afraid to be barefaced. Wine coolers hidden in sweatshirts, we drink to: Miley Cyrus, summertime, and the flavor of fourteen.
 
sixteen
The first time a boy saw me naked was on the water’s edge. Ripples reflected midnight black like the sky and my nipples were hard from June’s breath. I eased in slow and once beside him, he held me bare like that. Our bodies compressed like a whole moon, I kissed his neck while the stars rained silent glitter around us.
 
twenty-three
I have been washed in pools and rivers and Atlantic blues. I have been salted and chlorinated and smoothed by riptide. My feet have grown big enough to sprint and I know I am not a mermaid. I am seaweed and river rock and muck of the bay. I am at the beach and a dolphin’s fin breaks the waves so I say hello to my grandmother and let her know my life is ruled by water, so one day I will join her.

​The spring nestles beneath old shade trees that edge a farm field. It’s a remote location, but for decades, locals have been parking in the dirt turnoff and filling jugs with the cold, fresh water that runs out of a single pipe and into a shallow stream crowded with daylilies. Our family camp has no plumbing, so every couple of days during vacation, we drive to the spring.

When it was my turn to make a water run, I made my teenage son, Sean, come along. Sean had grown over the last year, passing the six foot mark, but he was still the same quiet, gentle kid he’d always been. He brought his Rubik’s cube, and the clicking sound filled the car. Sean’s not much of a talker.

When Sean and I pulled up, a car was already parked beside the spring. An elderly woman stood at the back of her car with several plastic gallons of water at her feet. She fumbled with her keys as she opened her trunk.

“Go help her,” I said to Sean. He didn't look up from his Rubik's cube, but he nodded.

I yanked the crate of empty jugs from the trunk, set them on the ground, and bent down to pick up the loose caps that had fallen.

The car door slammed as Sean got out. I glanced up at the sound, and the woman turned. Even from my awkward position, crouched on the ground behind the car, I could see her face.

She looked terrified.

I looked behind me. A narrow road wound uphill through fields of timothy and daisies, a few roadside trees splashing shade onto the pavement. Cows in a far field chewed contentedly in the sunshine.

But the woman wasn’t looking at the farm fields. Her eyes, wide and frightened, were on my son as he walked towards her.

Sean’s long dark hair was pulled back with a ragged bandana above scruffy facial hair. He wore a black t-shirt and black pants, neither of which had been washed since we arrived at camp. Sean isn’t a smiley person; even when he was a child, he always looked serious. He is tall and strong, and—I realized suddenly—fairly intimidating.

In a flash, I saw the elderly woman's perspective. My sweet, gentle son—the kid who had never even been in a fist fight, who never went fishing because he didn’t like killing things, who helped classmates with their math homework—looked to her like a threat, a menace, a danger.

Quickly, I stood up, so that the woman could see me.

At the same time, Sean stopped walking and said in his shy way: “Do you need some help?”

Relief spread across the woman’s face.

Sean lifted the jugs of water, one at a time, and put them gently into her car. The woman, still flustered, said thank you, and she drove away. Sean carried our crate of water jugs over to the pipe that gushed spring water. He picked up an empty jug, rinsed it, and held it under the water.

“That woman was afraid of you,” I said.

He shrugged. “I get that a lot.”

He spoke so softly that I could barely hear his words above the gurgling water. His hair hung into his face as he screwed the top onto the water jug and reached to grab the next empty one.

“I hate the stereotypes people have about teenage guys,” I said, loudly.

Sean looked up, shaking his hair out of his face.

“It's worse for women," he said. "Because they have legit reasons to be scared."

My grandson Ben took on the role of healer early on. At 18 months, he saw Daddy fall, turn purple, and briefly die of a v-fib. After Daddy came home from the hospital, Ben regularly took daddy’s blood pressure, listened to his heart, and measured his oxygen saturation. As he became more aware of the imminence of death, Ben became more alchemist/healer than doctor.

At four, he had invented reincarnation.

At our first get-together, as part of the gradual lifting of restrictions, almost six-year-old Ben told me he had the power to make me young again. He placed his hands on the back of my neck, sang some healing words, and told me, “In three days, you’ll wake up younger."

Before seeing Ben again, I got my pandemic hair axed and mowed my beard.

When we saw Ben again two weeks later, he looked at me wide-eyed and said, “It worked.” He then started a round-robin conversation about what animals we would each like to come back as in our next lives. Mommy picked a giant tortoise because they live longest. Grammy said a whale. I said I’d spin the wheel. Ben said he plans to be human next time, too.

The next afternoon, six of us—Ben and his twin Bella; four-and-a-half-year-old Mikey; Mommy and Daddy; and me Papa with my walking sticks of us—drove to the C&O Canal towpath for a walk. Grammy stayed home, tuckered out from Ben’s efforts to make her young again. The towpath’s surface consisted of small gray stones with mixed-in shell fragments—nearly ideal.

Almost immediately, Mikey tore ahead. Mommy laughed, “At least I know where he’s going to be when he stops.” Mikey’s feet ran out from under him. He began crying when he hit the ground. We sped up to see whether he was hurt. Mikey had skinned a knee and there were hints of blood. Mommy picked up Mikey to console him. Ben stepped toward Mommy, placed his cupped hands over Mikey’s knee, and began singing, “Heal up Mikey, heal up Mikey” to the tune of “Tender Shepherd.” Mikey quickly quieted. Ben removed his hands, inspected Mikey’s scrape, and exclaimed, “It stopped bleeding!” Mommy sat Mikey on her shoulders but when he couldn’t sit still, put him back down.

No sooner had Mommy put Mikey down than Bella tore ahead with Mikey close behind. As Bella turned to see how far behind Mikey was—a no-no for runners—she tripped and fell. She too had skinned her knee. After inspecting the scene, Ben cupped hands over Bella’s knee and began singing, “Heal up Bella, heal up Bella,” again to the tune of “Tender Shepherd.” Bella rapidly quieted. Nevertheless, Daddy picked up Bella and carried her on his shoulders.

When we reached the water pump, Bella wanted down, and Daddy cooperated. Ben pumped consistently until water came. Everyone splashed in it and drank their fill from their cupped hands. We walked the rest of the way to the tunnel. To quash plans in the making, Mommy read aloud a sign, “Do not climb on the stairways on both sides of the tunnel entrance because they get slippery.” The tunnel had no lighting, but it was a bright day, so we could see using the diminishing light behind us. And, at the far end, roughly a mile away, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Because the ground surface was uneven, there were inevitable puddles. We turned back when Mommy felt unsafe going further without flashlights.

Mikey had already taken off his puddle-wet shoes and socks. Once we reached broad daylight, Mikey began barefooting the towpath while availing himself of every puddle. Bella whimpered, so Daddy restored her position behind his neck. Mikey stopped and complained he hurt his left foot. Mommy found a blister on Mikey’s heel and put him back on her shoulders. I accidentally planted my left walking stick in front of Ben. He didn’t notice, tripped, went down hard, skinned a knee and elbow, and began to cry. Mommy put Mikey down.

I said, “Ben, remember, you can heal yourself.”

Sitting on the ground, Ben cupped hands over his knee, singing “Heal up Ben, heal up Ben” to the tune of “Tender Shepherd,” stretching “Ben” into two syllables, without tears.

Mommy said, “If you’d like, Ben, I can carry you.”

Ben shook his head, “Mommy, I got this.”