My Cardboard Balcony

She Drinks Chloroform by Belinda Roddie She drinks chloroform every other night, just so she can get her stomach pumped at one o'clock in the morning, because that's when the hot nurse works - the graveyard shift, which is ironic because a hospital prefers to be the opposite of a cemetery. He always asks her, "Miss, how is it that every time I come to work, there you are, poisoned like a hostage, waiting for me to stuff a hose down your gullet?" And she replies, with that soggy black look in her eye, "It's those dang cold remedy preparations - they always seem to have something nasty in them!" Shame how it's all devised; when the jealous doctor finds out, he prescribes, for a final visit, cyanide.

Dennis didn't enjoy simplifying any of the word problems that he gave to his students. They were word problems. They should not have to be simplified. It was all about the reading and the math, and if they couldn't do both, why even bother being in school? But the principal ragged him on it, and so did the students. Even the parents interviewed. Finally, he agreed that words like "phantasmagoria" and "lugubrious" probably weren't appropriately leveled words for a second grade math problem.

Licking the Needle by Belinda Roddie Licking the needle retains no purpose when the thread you're trying to loop through metal serves only as the sewn stitches holding your lobotomized dreams together in one crazed knitting pattern.

"Get me another beer?" "Haven't you had enough already?" "No, see, I had three IPAs. Now I want a Hefeweizen." "Are you kidding me?" "I've had a rough night." "No, a fucking slave back in the eighteen hundreds had a rough night. You're being pissy." "Yes, and being pissy merits alcohol! Here's five bucks - get me one so I don't have to move my pissy ass!"

Good For You by Belinda Roddie Good for you, sir, for making me twitchy - for allowing my two hands to clench and unclench at the very out-of-whack tune of your whiny pitch. For thinking you were some modern day savior of the bus-goers, telling that bicyclist what for. Yes, how dare he even think to accept common courtesy from a stranger, and to top it off, you decide that snark is the best witness to your great crusade. Fuck off, my dear gentleman, lest you feel your balls shrivel into wisps beneath your jeans and your scowl sag above your plaid collar. Do not bother to enlighten the scholarly masses when you cannot get over the useless idiosyncrasies of your everyday routine being offset by one iota. You do not deserve depth if you only sink into the shallow end of the pool. Breathe in the chlorine - it suits your briny tongue better.

I had heard the stories before. All of the stories, actually. Geronimo never let up with them. I knew his life story almost better than he did. In fact, when he started retelling stories to passerby, I would sometimes correct him if he couldn't remember a detail or botched a date. It was almost as if I was becoming the mental stenographer for him here. So I bought a typewriter from an old friend. Geronimo appreciated the tick-tack sound as I recorded his tales.

"Agh!" Sam shrieked. "What is this? It's burning me!" "Oh, are you allergic to that cream?" asked the doctor. "What the Hell do you think?" Sam howled. She held up her arm, and her mother, sitting in the corner, flinched at the sight. What was once a measly spider bite was a complete explosion of purples, blacks, and reds. Like Jackson Pollock had gotten angry at a canvas one day and coated it with colors instead of splattering it.