My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie "I love these shoes," she said, "but I hate the way they pinch my toes!" Sally demonstrated this to her wife, Nicole, by stripping one heel off her right foot, revealing one or two swelling blisters on her hallux. Nicole wrinkled her nose. "If they pinch your toes so badly," she quipped, "then why do you wear them?" "Because I like them. Duh." Now Nicole raised an eyebrow. "How can you like shoes that hurt you?" Sally's face scrunched up dramatically. "You don't get it!" she cried out. " Beauty is pain!" "All right, all right, Miss Femme Fatale," sighed Nicole, waving her off dismissively. "I gotta pick Wesley up at the station. I'll massage your feet later or something, okay?" This week's prompt was provided by Arden Roddie.

We were barely hanging on to life when the heatwave took over the battlefield. By then, water supplies had dwindled to almost nothing, and those who weren't dehydrated quickly succumbed to heat stroke. It was, allegedly, record-breaking, the earth scorched and the grass turned brown by the time the pressure eased off and winds began to blow again. I cradled my sergeant in my arms on the last day and tried to give her my canteen of water. But she refused to take a single sip.

I miss theater. I say that a lot, especially immediately after I've seen a show. I miss acting. I miss working tech. I miss seeing my words come to life onstage. I want to get involved in that world again - and in music as well. I just feel like I can't anymore. When I first decided to be an English teacher, I figured that my time after school would remain mostly available, save for some paper grading sessions. One of my New Year's resolutions, in fact, was to get involved in theater again after such a long hiatus. The last time I was in a play, I was almost eighteen years old, so it's been over a decade. This thespian's a bit deprived here. What I didn't take into account, however, was the wrench thrown into my plans: I was hired as the yearbook adviser at the high school I work at. Yearbook takes an immense amount of time out of my day. Ideally, it wouldn't; my students would organize, design, write, and photograph the whole time, and my main job...

A.I. Academic by Belinda Roddie "What sort of robot are you?" "A rather educated one."

Steve and Sebastian sealed the floors, slammed the shutters, and locked the doors. Steve and Sebastian were shut up tight, and they didn't want guests anymore. Carl and Christina kept their lights on, their fun nights long, and their voices in song. Steve and Sebastian didn't like it, but Carl and Christina stayed strong.

The Colonel by Belinda Roddie The colonel wrote a letter to her wife with her back against an exhausted oak, contemplating the closing of her life as missiles fell and thick gunpowder choked the air. Her men were falling one by one, and her leg ached from wounds she could not tend. She pushed her cap back, remembered her gun, and kept scribbling away until the end. They found her body slumped against the tree, blood still trickling, and yet, a smile stayed upon her face. They cleared all the debris and carried her to a place by the bay where her wife found her letter - torn and stained, but readable, expressing love and pain.