My Cardboard Balcony

Dust to Dust by Belinda Roddie My bucket is full of ashes, white as receding snow, the hillsides bare and brown as I trek toward my sarcophagus. It is ornate, amber-hued, like the heavy sun against my eyes. This coffin was meant for me, not you. And yet, it is your laughter I deposit here. Your smile, in crisp, non-human specks. Your promises as thin as paper. The lost words burn without heat, leaving a hole in my pail as large as the chasm in my chest.

"Are you okay?" "Nobody asked you!" I snapped, before I realized who was talking to me. She had apparently just emerged from the bathroom stall, her dark hair tied in a ponytail and her face stoic. "Oh." I exhaled. "I'm...I'm sorry. I didn't know..." "It's okay," she said. "I figured you were stressed out. Anything I can do?" "Rewind the last three months of my life?" She smirked. "Something I can do that works with the laws of physics, Kathryn."

Warm Milk by Belinda Roddie I drew up a bucket from the wishing well, and the water was warm and sweet, like milk with a dollop of honey added in, a sampling of summer in childhood's wet hands.

Pushing aside the fancy plates and cutlery, all gleaming gold under the light of the gaudy chandelier, I found a modest placard sporting my misshapen name, reminding me that I would be sitting in between Mister Wordschmidt and Missus Gallant from upstairs. I was beginning to rethink coming to this dinner party in the first place when I saw Missus Gallant's gorgeous daughter sidle toward the table, her right hand holding up her long purple skirt.

There were no outsiders allowed, the sign said, and they had ways of knowing. Anyone who had been born and raised in the city was branded on the flesh of their right legs, a stark, circular mark that even glowed through the fabric of their breeches. I knew that, if I tried to step foot into that one particular pub, I'd not only be thrown out - I'd most likely be given a broken nose and a black eye first.

by Belinda Roddie She would never be satisfied until all the mosquitoes were dead. So, she killed them. All of them. Using her master mosquito-specific death ray from her secret laboratory. As a result, several animals who relied on mosquitoes for food died, and entire ecosystems were destroyed as a result of a mass extinction. Good going, supervillain Christina. Sure as Hell not thinking about mosquito bites now, are ya? This week's prompt was provided by Arden Kilzer.

She sat gazing out at the razed fields from her shattered window, the smoke of once golden huts still smoldering from the ground. She held a rosary tightly in between both hands, rubbing the beads against her palms as if attempting to heat them up like coals. Outside, the ambulances were arriving, and men in hazmat suits were bringing in shovels. The dead, burned to ashes, were to be buried deep under the earth.