My Cardboard Balcony

Untitled by Belinda Roddie   I went to a hacker convention. Pre-pubescent computer wizards hovered over keyboards like stony gargoyles hunched over a scattered cemetery of circuits and wires and tombstone monitors. I half-expected their fingers to meld with metal, to melt like hot metal on plastic letters that spelled out defiance in a bestial reaction.

When the boy built a sand castle on the beach, he also wanted to make a sand king and a sand queen. But the sand queen would be traitorous and unfaithful, attempting to overtake the sand king with a sand army. But the sand king would have the god Poseidon on his sand, who'd send out a flurry of sea monsters in the form of waves to wash away the army. But ultimately, the castle itself would be sacrificed. The boy's parents always thought he had a beautiful imagination.