My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie And so she ate them. And there was nothing left but sticky bones. The warmth of devoured flesh settled in her stomach. Her head buzzed with the flavor, the ecstasy of the experience. Everything had been perfect - the texture, the taste, the temperature. There had even been a perfect heat to it, as it were. The cooked carcasses of the dead had burned down her throat in such a satisfying way. She burped, and she laughed. As she sucked her thumbs clean, her friends looked at her warily. One of them had his head in his hands. The other tapped a long fingernail against her glass. "Um,..you sure you don't need a napkin?" "Nah, I'm cool," she replied, before hollering to the frazzled waiter. "Yo, Joseph! Twelve more buffalo wings over here!"

I hid inside a tree trunk because it was hollow, and I waited for the men dressed in shadows to pass by. Their boots made loud, scraping noises as their pointed toes ripped up the plants, tossing dirt and broken roots into the air like Mother Nature's confetti. I prayed there weren't spiders crawling around me in my shelter, but the smell of sap calmed me, like I was breathing in the odor of maple syrup at my father's cabin.