My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie The UNICEF survival kits only had cigarettes. So we lit one up each and sat around in a circle, letting the smoke sprout in gray blossoms around our heads. Around us, the grass was black with decay, and the water that touched the bank was toxic green. There were six of us in total, and we must have been the last people on this continent. And here we were, with cancer sticks. "Least we can kill ourselves faster," quipped one of the six, sucking on the cylinder like it were candy. His nametag said BORIS. I was sitting on his right. He smelled like roasted garlic. Everything did. The airplane we had been flying over the scene was now a gross, skeletal husk on the horizon. Twisted like a dead contortionist's body, it almost looked human the way it rose up from the crater it had made in the earth. Its wings looked more like broken legs, metal kneecaps reaching toward the sky as a howl appeared to emanate from the corpse. Maybe you could hear it weep

"I have a letter," said the butler. "To whom is it addressed?" The butler looked at him oddly. "To you, sir," he said. "Whom else would it be addressed to?" His elderly master reached for the beige envelope with trembling fingers. A red wax stamp held the crinkled paper together, but the man had trouble opening it. The butler had to get him his prized brass letter opener.