My Cardboard Balcony

You Slept With Sean by Belinda Roddie He had an air mattress pumped for two, the crumbs of bagel bites still on the rug. He bellowed like train wheels in his sleep. You remembered to lock the door. When you woke up, he was already making eggs, and you wanted tabasco sauce with your meal, but all he had was ketchup, so you knew it was just a fling.

I knew every card dealer in the casino personally, so I was put at a table with a machine and had to deal with the clicks and whirs of the aces and spades and hearts and jacks being shuffled and spewed at me. At this point, it was me against the mechanical dealer. No one else bid on my money - the owner wanted me to lose. He wanted me, for once in my life, not to walk away with double or triple the amount I had walked in with. I walked out with quadruple the amount that night.

Klondike Bar What would I do for a Klondike bar? Kill a man. No, I'm kidding. I'd do nothing. 'Cause that pseudo-chocolate shit is overrated.

"How much stereotypically rugged terrain are we going to have to trudge across before this blasted expedition is over?" growled Quinoni, brushing her too long bangs away from her eyepatch. Even two weeks after the scuffle in the tavern, her eye had not fully healed. She and Arvey were both beginning to worry that she would lose sight in that eye. Mistress Kor, for the first time, seemed distressed. "I don't know anymore, Miss Wuntyn."

Snout by Belinda Roddie He struck the dog something awful, and when I saw the blood coagulating across the poor mutt's muzzle, I suddenly drew the courage to grab my nearly empty beer bottle and smash it over the abuser's head. The name on her tag was Stacey, and I kept it that way. When times got hard, and all I could afford was broth for myself so Stacey could stay fed, the thing that would comfort me at night was when my dear pooch nestled her newly mended snout against my side as I succumbed to sleep on an air mattress closest to the open window.

"You look deranged in this photograph." "That's because I was," replied Ana, with a small, pained laugh. "Clear out of my fucking mind. The doctors didn't know what was wrong. They stuck me with every needle they got their hands on and pumped me so full of drugs that my blood was only ten percent actual blood." "And then..." "And then..." She shrugged. "It was over. Just like that. And I went back to work."

The dress that Sherry wore was fairly modest, with a pastel tone that wouldn't distract or alarm the more conservative crowd at the city hall. She was there to support her older sister, Erika, in her quest to become the town's next council member. Stopping by the long table that was set full-blazen with food and beverages, Sherry stopped to pluck a piece of Swiss on a toothpick from a plate and look for a good bottle of Pinot Noir.