My Cardboard Balcony

Recipe For Mint by Belinda Roddie You first start with an idea - a very new, edgy idea. Something like a phone app with a new game that shoots squirrels into the Eiffel Tower for candy hearts. You develop it, you plan it, and the idea mutates into rigid chunks of code on a silicon-cold tablet. You send the idea to your friends. They love it. They want to endorse it. So the idea now has a following; a rabid following. And you get it packaged and shipped off to the nearest "gaming" company that'll wipe its ass with your blueprint and create an entirely different game with chipmunks instead of squirrels and the Space Needle instead of the Eiffel Tower because France blows Jerry Lewis's dick. Then you'll get royalties every once in a while and pay for your half of the apartment a little easier. Or you can just eat a gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Because that mint is way better than the other mint.

As Larson tumbled out from behind the bookshelf, he found himself staring right at Graham, who remained frozen from where she was sitting by the mantel. A small leatherbound book was clutched in her right hand, while a dagger with a curved blade and beaded handle was clutched in the other. Larson did not dare ask why she had such a pair of objects, given Graham's wrathful reputation.

G Word by Belinda Roddie You ask anyone within a five mile radius of you, and they'll have a different response as to what the "g word" might be. Don't hint at it. Simply provide the censorship, and the listener will mold the language in the privacy of her own cortex, like hidden wax building within an ear. Some people will say, "Gay." Others, "Genitalia." Others still, "Gringo." Maybe even "Graduate." Because it's graduation time, of course, and it's a big, scary word, "graduate." Means you're going places. "Going" is another word that could be a g word. Personally, I like "gangrene," "giraffe," "gremlin," "gabardine." "Gabardine" is a personal favorite. But most of all, the g word could be nothing but a superlative, one that some people are too afraid to overuse and others are too into using on everyone: "Great." ...

Seven pairs of jeans lay unwashed by the front porch, not even close to the drooping clothesline that had barely held so much as a corduroy jacket in months past. In fact, it was hard to say if the owner of said garments was even around much these days. The people in town liked to create theories about where the dweller had gone to, and how he or she must have had excellent taste in casual pants.

All the beads were strung together to make a beautiful red and silver necklace, which Sylvain happily presented on Father's Day. She ignored her older brother Terry's derisive snort of laughter, but his words still bit deeply into the sweet six-year-old's ears. "It's jewelry," he scoffed. "Men don't wear jewelry." But her father did wear the necklace. He wore it every single day for a month until it broke.

by Belinda Roddie "The wolf's howl is fatal to all who hear it," it is claimed. Which, in retrospect, is really hard to fathom considering that if anyone heard the wolf's howl, he or she would die. Meaning who would be able to go back and tell someone that the wolf's howl was fatal? Certainly not a dead person. You see, a dead person has no capability of speech, ergo, no will to communicate. Because the person can't speak. You know. 'Cause the person's dead. The truth is, the wolf has been very much wronged reputation-wise. You see, people have heard its howl - it just happens to be badly timed. Many people have indeed fallen dead around the time the canine's released a high-pitched wail, but that was due to a contagion. So really, bad timing is all there is to it. It also explains why not everyone died upon hearing the howl. Heck, I know people who have heard it and they're as healthy as unhunted bison. I did plan to interview the wol...

Madison was purple-sleeved and silver-cuffed, and her hair was tied back loosely in a braid. She walked onto that stage with all the Shakespearean charisma necessary to bring justice to the idioms of the bard. She was a magnificent tragedian in the all-girl cast, bringing more bravado to the role of Hamlet than most men that her director father had seen in performances past.