My Cardboard Balcony

Graceful by Belinda Roddie There's a montage somewhere of a perfect 50s family having a picnic at the local park where oaks grow and sequioas and lots and lots of flowers, and a little boy pulls a little red wagon with a white logo and four little black rubber wheels. Then one day, the wheel breaks on his little wagon, which he has decorated with flowers from the park, and although he cries, he then dances gracefully around the wreckage in homage to the things that were and no longer are.

The cast and crew all waited for the director to step out of the small conference, expecting his face to be sagging with disappointment. The issues with the producer had run rampant throughout the studio, and now all they could do was hold their breath. Harriet Sanderman, the youngest of the cast and the child star, bit her lip to keep it from quivering. She had so wanted this film to be completed, to show she was worth more than a few cute catchphrases.

Catastrophic Cacophony by Belinda Roddie Caution! Catastrophic cocktails push lactose intolerant men toward a pristine circle of emasculated pinwheels where the colors all blend in and out and blue and bleed and white and windy drifting onward past a notion of disturbance in a window frosted with depictions of a lady in a bathtub, brushing all her teeth with a mustache plucked from the lip of her ex-husband. Tick tock. Tick tock. Pandora's winding a clock. Second hand's crying a ballad, minute hand's about to stop.

A random name generator, clicked on with a mouse covered in mustard from fingers that just ate a rattlesnake sausage. Not kidding. No joke. I find Remus Archibald Thunder. Thunder is a last name? You learn something new every day. The outline for my fantasy epic lies out in front of me like a dissected frog. The guts and entrails all spilling out in compact Times New Roman font. This whole process is going to end up killing me some day. Literally, not figuratively.

Brambles by Belinda Roddie A prince was blinded on a wicked thicket, and the anemia in his veins shrieked out a brand new epiphany - orange words on white lips, the pink flushed out like brandy from a wide-eyed flask which glassy spectacles are broken. Life is not always fair.

The staff had a jewel upon its head - a large jewel in the shape of a crescent moon, pounded out thin with red and gold shimmering in its folds and indents. Like malleable paper painted and made to shine in a moonless winter night. She gripped the wood firmly and let it dance upon her palm. This was her stave now. Her mother was dead.

Popcorn flew in every direction along the industrial skyline of theater seats, red and plush as they always were, while the black and white face of a brand new celebrity beamed down upon the rowdy audience. The music behind the walls of the scene was blooming in a marvelous crescendo, just as a man hollered for the sexy lead actress to take off her blouse. And the shining knight of a performer arming the screen gave a token grin to the lone watcher as a cup of soda struck him in the nose.