My Cardboard Balcony

Fish Sandwich by Belinda Roddie Cornucupias of conversations over an awkward fish sandwich, the kind that leaves you hovering over a white basin with your guts around the edges. You wash down the bad taste with beer, but the beer gets dry in your mouth, and the stranger across from you keeps blabbing, blabbing, blabbing on and on and on about the implications of war taxes or dehydration of neurological philosophy or something blurred in your nutrients-deprived cortex. Never you mind questioning. Just sip the water provided - leave the stein on the left corner of the table. When you're done projectile spewing, you can hoist him up with a rope and tie his throat to the ceiling fan, watching as he whips with the summer wind, eyes as scaly as the salmon.

"Don't do it!" screamed Madison, flailing in her bed, as the doctors closed in on her. Her face was bright purple and her fingers were numb, but she would not stop her convulsing. The men in red polos and jeans, with syringes clipped to their hips and flasks stapled to their belts, did not falter in their task. They tried to pin her as she screamed. Her uncle stood languidly in the corner.