My Cardboard Balcony

Big Fat Bruise by Belinda Roddie Like the time you swung your hip into the side of the bed after a rough and unhewn night of sex with your boss's nephew because your wife wasn't manly enough for you, and you dragged your sore side to your car and drove for forty miles back home to where your daughter was watching late night television and your son was eating mini candies out of a tube. And in the morning when your wife asks. "Where'd you get that awful bump?" you'll tell her you were sleepwalking again because you had a hankering for cornflakes.

The flea market was bustling with people, and most of them surrounded the waxwoman's booth. Displayed all around the tables, of course, were statues, orbs, and totems sculpted entirely out of wax. In fact, if you were to buy one of the trinkets for a handful of crumpled one-dollar bills, you could faintly smell honeycomb emanating from the wax's pores.