My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie A crumble of bricks, a few rusty metal beams, and broken glass belie the deaths here so long ago that disgraced this town. No one has dared to move away the residue, or perhaps no one has simply bothered to. Like it'd be an inconvenience to rid the place of this traumatic memory once and for all, and instead, the wound should simply scar. The muddle of this broken residential skeleton rests on the outskirts of town, beside the abandoned gun store. Gabriel Russells worked at that store, before he took two revolvers and a shotgun from the wall and infiltrated what used to be the tiny Unitarian Church of Christ. A wedding was being held there for Tommy Cain and Hilary McGuff, the former having once been Tammy with brown hair that sprung up in dainty curls. Russells killed seven people before turning the gun on himself, and instantly, the town became notorious for being full of rednecks and transphobes. It wasn't like that. Never was. Russells was a rare sp

Zack had a silver hoop that looped through his right looped lobe. It was a hoop that looped about seven times in loop-de-loop fashion. Like a roller coaster that looped around until it made you dizzy. The silver would always droop from his face like a sad, lonely little lump of metal, but Zack was proud of it. It was a hoop! That looped! ...In his ear!