My Cardboard Balcony

Burger Stack by Belinda Roddie burger stack rack of lamb ham and cheese please, on rye buy a coke broke for shit hit the spot hot dog ketchuped get up for sauce gloss the pork chop lop the meat off got grease dripping slipping down T-shirts hurts on the tongue lungs heave for more more

This was the last straw. First, it had been the three pubescent boys stealing potato chips from the deli area. Then, it was a middle-aged woman opening a cupcake container just to eat one of the chocolate puffed pastries. And now, two giggly high school girls were opening up cans of soda and drinking them. The security guard had no choice. He had to save the day.

Turrets by Belinda Roddie Baron Jeremiah's fortress was foreclosed and repossessed after he filed bankruptcy with the Royal Council, which had just approved the new recreational swimming pool for the populace in the village, all the while affording court entertainment where jesters made comparisons to greens and reds pouring down in matching rivulets to fill the wells for the townsfolk to drink.

"I'll make this brief - " "That's what you said last time." "Well, yes, but..." "And you took thirty minutes speaking last time." "I understand, but..." "All about Gustav Holst." There was a giggle resounding throughout the classroom. A rickety racket of tittering. The teacher was not amused. But the students certainly were. Very much so. By non-briefness.

I Ate A Tree by Belinda Roddie I ate a tree. I literally ate a tree. I stripped the bark off its body with my sharpened teeth, and I chewed at it like it was gristle. I tried a cluster of bay leaves as a side dish, but it made me crave for pasta with marinara. If I looked hard enough, I could spot tender sprigs of sap crawling from the raw flesh of the trunks where I satisfied my hunger. I sucked away at the sweet knotholes, thinking of maple syrup and shortstacks, glistening with kitchen dreams. The berries scattered in hateful hordes were not edible in the least, instead dangling like forbidden jewels to take from the trove. And before I slept, the crisp cool rain made a puddle in the mud, where I lapped up the earth until it grew molten, and bubbled, and erupted, and the landscape became lava rock and I was left with pangs.

Jack was switching from a large white pill to a tiny orange pill. He had been told that his current medication wouldn't be too kind to his kidneys, and frankly, he preferred potential mood swings to the inability to create normal bodily functions. He sat down for a lunch of cheese and crackers and popped the little tablet into his mouth, washing it down with his can of coke. He could almost feel it fizzing into dust in his stomach.

“What,” roared my father, “is the meaning of all this racket?” He was heaving and wheezing in the doorway, his ample frame squished against the frame, as my sister and I sheepishly looked up from where we kneeled on the floor. I still firmly gripped the baseball bat, while my sister wielded the plastic sword and dagger that our mother had bought for her from the costume store. “The monster came back,” I tried to explain. “What monster?” barked my father. “The big green one.”