My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie On those long country drives, I see the silhouette in the back seat. It seems to have gotten smaller these days, though. Almost as if it, too, has become stooped with age, such as I have. I have always had white hair. My friends used to call me the Human Cockatoo due to the way it rose like a bright firework from my head, infamously capable of defying gravity. I always liked it. My wife liked it, too. She said it made me look like Andy Warhol. Only unlike him, I was not a homosexual. I had been driving my truck down a Nebraska road when I first heard the thump beneath my wheel. It had been admittedly dark, and my headlights had been flickering in and out, in and our, for the past hour of my trip. When I got out of the car, there didn't seem to be any sign of a stone, or a stick, or an animal, or any object that would have disturbed my car. I let my hands listlessly paw through my own rocket of hair, exhaled, and went back to my seat, only to find a young...

Of the six of us remaining - the six of us, bloodied, bruised, beaten nearly to individual pulp that still managed to breathe through one nostril and talk out of one side of the mouth - four decided to flee. Two of us didn't. One of those two was me. I propped my aching body against the nearest wall, trying to inhale and exhale rhythmically and ignore the pain in my broken ribs. The second of the two was my little sister, trying to stop the crimson streaks still oozing from the gashes on my arms.