My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie Every razor blade hidden behind the bathroom mirror told a story, and it helped that they had been collected from several different people. Some blades held the wear and tear of daily or nightly shaving, from the jawline to the thigh, with few nicks in between. Others, surprisingly, were adequately honed and sharp. Something Sweeney Todd could use to slice up human hor d'oeuvres before the main meat pastry entree. Jules worked as a psychiatrist in the main ward of Helm Hospital, and she had taken the time to pick out each razor, tag them, and slip them behind the mirror where her husband wouldn't notice. Raoul was a desperately paranoid man, and for one reason or another, he was always worried that Jules, in the long run, wasn't as conventionally happy with her life as he had hoped. One look at the collection of pointy metal slicers, and he would most likely have gone into cardiac arrest after beginning a tirade on how life was so worth living to his m

There were six doors in the entire house, but they all led to the same core room: The Zone Room. It didn't matter if you were waltzing out in a bathrobe with toothpaste still stuck to your lower lip. It didn't matter if you had just finished scrubbing a stubborn spot of egg yolk off a tarnished frying pan. It didn't matter if you had just had the best sex of your life, cleaned up, and gone out for a bottle of wine or a pack of cigarettes. You always wound up in the Zone Room. And it was a good thing.