My Cardboard Balcony

Semi-Solid Squash by Belinda Roddie It had stayed too long in the sun, and so it reeked of hung over mornings and coffee stains left to linger on pant legs, tucked under rotten wood from eight am to five pm. She threw it out after a while, but the odor stayed, and it was so potent that the next door neighbors couldn't sleep and loudly complained of newfound symptoms of depression and ennui.

The animal was very versatile, from what little the scientists would tell us. They wouldn’t mention the term “hybrid,” or “combination,” or even “mutation.” Essentially, they had spiked a poor creature’s little brain with enough chemicals to shut down every organ in a person’s body, and yet the thing had lived and breathed and smiled with fangs and a lolling tongue. So it was versatile. It was so depressing that it was almost “aw” worthy.

Melted Pumpkin by Belinda Roddie The goblet was crispy cold in her right hand as she drank the autumn brew, collective sighs rumbling from all corners of her belly as she swilled the pumpkin stew, hot and spicy and very, very comfortable for a night without heat to be had in her little house, so that the leaves picked up just right through the open window with a breeze that added a little chill to her afternoon dessert.

"You ever been scuba diving before?" I shook my head. Outside, the waves were making loud clapping noises on the sand, like Poseidon was applauding our idle chit-chat. My date - bearded, stocky, and bespectacled - swirled cream into his coffee and smiled. "Neither have I," he said, "but I've been snorkeling. The coastline is beautiful, but underwater with the sun hitting the top of the water just right is fantastic."

Hard Lemon by Belinda Roddie She had a face like a hard lemon, peel baked over by the summer strokes, the curl of zest vacated for the sake of stale, glass left sour without a sugary tang, grim, grim, grim.

The drought killed thousands of livestock, including the cattle that my father owned, leaving us to pack our minivan and abandon the property. The dust was swarming the day we left, clusters of insectile dirt particles collecting on the tires, as the heat choked us even with the windows down. I propped myself against the seat and ignored the beeping of my little brother's portable gaming console, desperate to see a cloud in the sky.

The senator was bull-headed, and horned similarly to boot, and when he marched onto the podium to denounce the new healthcare plan yet again, the town hall audience was ready to embrace him. "But a full government shutdown over the president's plan?" one journalist dared to ask. "Don't you think that's a little extreme?" "What can I say?" the senator replied with a slimy smirk. "I'm an extremist. There should be more people like me." Needless to say, the social networking sites had a field day lambasting him.