My Cardboard Balcony

Jo's Sheriff Hat by Belinda Roddie Jo's sheriff hat looked quite authentic, and when she wore it through town, the boys would stop and stare, while she grinned and waved her right hand in a salute, imagining the "clop- clip-clop" of hooves as she pretended she was galloping toward a saloon. Her big and bearded father raised a brow as he followed his daughter, stains of the oil rig he worked at present on his shirt. The two of them were walking to a store where they sold costumes, and the sweet manager knew that Jo would want a shiny badge that day to go with her great hat. "Also, a vest," Jo said. "A sheriff's gotta look her best!"

"Dude! What happened?" "I don't know, man!" yelped Hazel, looking feverish as she jerked at the brim of her cap. "One minute, he was fine, the next he totally flipped out! It's crazy!" "Where is he?" I demanded. "Bedroom, second floor. He won't come out. And he keeps screaming at these random intervals - " A high-pitched, grating howl appropriately accompanied Hazel's declaration.

Jar Gun by Belinda Roddie You are in my lingual territory, and you've found lifeless chunks of text that used to be stories floating in the empty cavity of my skull. They scooped my brains out with a ladle, but there wasn't enough broth in their bowls to feed a rat. And somehow, they were content with storing my remains in a pretty coffin, like my flesh are pages in a bound book, filled with random jargon, spraying bullets filled with nothing.

Nothing today! We'll see what happens tomorrow.

My Shirt by Belinda Roddie Once upon a time, I was a hypochondriac; it's worth noting that I still am, technically, a hypochondriac, because as experts like to tell us, once a crazy person, always a crazy person. But for the sake of conventional storytelling, let's stick with the liberating past tense: was.  From 2011 to 2012, I was obsessed with sickness. It began with a tick bite that wouldn't go away, and even though my immune system was like a steel factory, melting away mischief with T-cell cogs and teeth, I went to the doctor to get useless antibiotics. That was when, coincidentally, the headaches started. I was prescribed way too strong a nasal spray. Then I couldn't sleep. And from there on out, anything that proved remotely precarious to my health and happiness was always on my mind. I could get a bruise on my leg from a simple slip and fall on the asphalt right outside the interfaith building where I attended noon Catholic mass, and ...

A friend liked to claim that he was all about chivalry - even after he had gotten seven drinks poured down his shirt, nine slaps in the face, and at least two jabs to the nutsack over one week alone. It was hard to remind him that being chivalrous and being overtly forward were two entirely different things, because he wouldn't budge on what he believed was the true path of romance. Last time I checked, someone hit him in the head with a baseball bat.

The Hound's Pail by Belinda Roddie I was in the kitchen when I heard the coonhounds bay, and when I checked outside, I saw the puppies drinking straight from the tin bucket dangling from a string, and I knew it was Garth's moonshine, transferred from the leaden barrel, and the dogs got dizzy afterward, howling in circles, tongues licking the stars.