My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie The skeletons tap danced until they had completely fallen apart. Rather than hearing shrieks of alarm or confusion, I listened to the sound of over six dozen audience members' enthusiastic clapping as a janitor swept the bones away. "What's going to happen to them?" I asked Louis, who was looking through binoculars even though we were only two rows away from the stage. "Eh, you know," he mumbled sardonically. "Put 'em back together." I knew who those two skeletons were: Martin and Alex, twin brothers. "Show business must be tough for them." "Sure, I guess." We had decided to partake in the recital at the university, where our son Stephen studied dance and music with several creatures of supernatural background. It wasn't like the town we came from: Here, we were the minority. We were humans surrounded by werewolves, ghosts, vampires, and other conventional or non-conventional entities in the...

The fruit had a very different texture than the apples I had eaten earlier that morning. As I chewed and voiced my confusion, my sister trotted up to me. "What's that?" "I don't know, but it's crispy." "Like...apple crispy?" "No. Like...crispy. Like chip crispy. Or candy bar crispy." "Oh." She frowned. "Does it taste like chocolate?" "No." "Then what does it take like?'