My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie It wasn't my fault. I tell myself that over and over. Half-buried in the bleached sheets, the pillow muffling all sound threatening to rattle my skull, the curtains drawn so tightly across the window that there was no such thing as daylight. Outside, the clatter of the wind against the masts of nearby sailboats sounded too much like dry bones clinking together. I'm all too familiar with the sound. It wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault. I know that I had been drinking that night, almost three weeks ago. I remember the way she ripped the car keys away from my hand. I had walked home in the cold, bitter dark, my thin jacket hardly protecting me from the elements. She had told me to do that. She had told me it was the only way I could be safe. There were bubbles on her breath, too. My parents stopped asking me to leave my room about three days ago. They still knock, though. They leave plates of food outside that I hardly ...

Deep in the jungle, the survivors huddle over the wreckage of a plane that once knew how to fly. They cook up animal entrails in a bucket over a primitive, whimpering fire. As they serve the congealed intestines in scoops, they're put off by the smell - an odor that reminds them of something, strangely enough, from their homes. An odor of smoke and charred flesh and what used to be alive now decaying in the spoons that they bring to their mouths.