My Cardboard Balcony

The Moons by Belinda Roddie When the light caught on my overstrung fingers, it was like I was balancing two somber nickels on my cuticles, watching the glowing craters pop and fester in the night sky. My father brought me a bowl of something to drink, and we watched the pair of rocky eyes swivel in a murky blue dreamscape, trying to dance but having no feet to coordinate their steps with. I sipped from the wooden mouth in my hands and tasted a hot star on my tongue, and I knew that with this in my belly, the sun would burn extra bright and make up for the frost developed under my boots by the hostile double evening of celestial confusion.

Three officers had been commissioned to protect the Hades Mansion, which was the largest, flashiest, and of course most targeted estate in the entire city. Its owner, a bloated belly of a man with the stereotypical walrus mustache, asked for one of the officers to stay in front of the door of his room, in order to feel more protected. Officer Tandy had never seen the man's daughter roll her eyes so violently.