My Cardboard Balcony

I have an idea for my third novel. It's muddled, but it's got a premise. It requires some surrealist elements, but it can be grounded in realistic emotion. It's crazy, but it's workable. And it actually did come to me in a dream. Yes, I dreamed this plot. This is going to be far different than either of the novels I've already completed. And yet, at the same time, it has roots. I'll let you few readers know more details as I begin to write. Wish me luck.

False Prophet  by Belinda Roddie Let me be your false prophet Let me walk across your swimming pool Let me sleep on your couch and drink your wine And whisper your fate into your ear each night Let me be your false prophet Let me promise you bread with milk and honey And sugar by the spoonful Let me reenact each sinner’s sin And bring miracles to life in front of your friends Let me eat your fruits of labor, scour your family albums, Read your golden bible to your children in foreign tongues In languages they cannot understand Let me drive out all your demons and make them dance On the table in your living room Let me be your very own false prophet Until your savior turns on you The work you see here was written in the fall of 2009. It was last edited in December of the same year.

Due to my being  in Cazadero with no internets, I could not put up a OneWord for Friday. Not to worry, though - Whims of the Time Traveler and Introspection are incoming.

The Spatula For Pancakes by Belinda Roddie The spatula for pancakes was missing from the utensil drawer. No matter how I sifted and re-sifted through the spoons and rolling pins, I couldn't find the tool necessary for creating a great abundance of delicious, brown flapjacks for everyone in my family to enjoy. Suddenly, I heard a cackle and then some shushing from the cupboard. So I pulled the door open. I saw, beside the corn flakes and bag of pistachios, three kitchen gnomes, using the spatula as a catapult. Its fulcrum was bread, all stale. I just had scrambled eggs instead.

Lieutenant Clemington, in my opinion, held far too much influence on the corporals and privates milling about the barracks. It wasn't sexual allure, and some more chauvinistic soldiers would try to have me believe - it was difficult to make any roughhousing young woman like me trust in their more masculine thought processes. But Clemington was a different story than I was. She held an aura to her that drew in appeal. And it frightened me.

Five Minutes by Belinda Roddie My stopwatch exploded; tiny fragments, shrapnel, clogged my vision, and now I can't see anything else but smears of color instead of faces, and places, and things, and scenes. It was only five minutes ago that I felt normal, but now the sadness drips off the tongue like dew off a clichéd flower petal, and no amount of sun will bring light to me. Not now. Not ever in the persistent present.

"What did you derive this conclusion from?" asked the professor as she sat down with the student for their one on one meeting regarding final papers. "Bats." The professor raised an eyebrow. "Sorry?" "Bats," the student repeated. "See, I'm a big night wanderer. I wander at night. Fairly straightforward, if you ask me." "Yes, I suppose so, but - " "And see, there are a lot of bats flying around my neighborhood lately," the student interrupted. "And somehow, it just...fit with the whole existential crisis of Hemingway's minimalist work, you know?"