My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie "I love these shoes," she said, "but I hate the way they pinch my toes!" Sally demonstrated this to her wife, Nicole, by stripping one heel off her right foot, revealing one or two swelling blisters on her hallux. Nicole wrinkled her nose. "If they pinch your toes so badly," she quipped, "then why do you wear them?" "Because I like them. Duh." Now Nicole raised an eyebrow. "How can you like shoes that hurt you?" Sally's face scrunched up dramatically. "You don't get it!" she cried out. " Beauty is pain!" "All right, all right, Miss Femme Fatale," sighed Nicole, waving her off dismissively. "I gotta pick Wesley up at the station. I'll massage your feet later or something, okay?" This week's prompt was provided by Arden Roddie.

We were barely hanging on to life when the heatwave took over the battlefield. By then, water supplies had dwindled to almost nothing, and those who weren't dehydrated quickly succumbed to heat stroke. It was, allegedly, record-breaking, the earth scorched and the grass turned brown by the time the pressure eased off and winds began to blow again. I cradled my sergeant in my arms on the last day and tried to give her my canteen of water. But she refused to take a single sip.