My Cardboard Balcony

Wailing of the Walls by Belinda Roddie The patchwork girl, she sits and spins the cobwebs in the corners. Dust is dust, and tiny legs leave tiny prints across the wood, as rotten as an overly ripe fruit. Not even the termites will find a hearty meal in the cellar tonight. Your hair splits both ways, gray as Zeus's lightning. It's lost its luster; he is old now, and tired. Even his beard has lost its static beauty. The broken clock you left behind is wet with loose wine. Earthquakes have depleted your supply of happiness. Stale pills are not a good substitute in the dark. The bottle's dry. The hearth has burnt out. There is no warmth. There is only the distant keening of widows in black shawls, trapped between the splinters of your walls. Frayed postcards. Rusted souvenirs. Going, going, gone.

"To call you my accomplice," I grumbled as I pressed my back against the door of the prison cell, "would be too complimentary. Moronic minion? Maybe. Doofus drone? Even better. But definitely not accomplice. That implies actual success." "You keep insulting me, miss," grumbled Chuck from the corner, "and you're not getting anything from this bowl of gruel tonight. Or the pisswater, for that matter."

The Rich Man's Delusion by Belinda Roddie My pewter house is melting in the volcanic inferno. I have sacrificed my sons for sanctity. If this is the end, pluck the rings from my swollen thumbs and sell them to the highest bidders. Not because I have any kin to bequeath them to, but because I have a delicate reputation to uphold.

You weren't the slightest apologetic after the fight. You didn't give me ice for my bruises, or take back any of the words you assaulted me with. You acted like you were simply "in a bad mood," like I could easily forgive you for a lapse in judgment. I couldn't. That was why I packed two bags and left you a brief goodbye note on the kitchen table for you to peruse by the time I was a good one hundred miles away. Good thing I wasn't apologetic, either.

He was going to die - of that there was no doubt. The better question was how long he could postpone the inevitable. The first thing he did was leave the knife embedded in his hip. Taking it out would only turn the stream of blood pouring from his side into a menacing river. The second thing he did was crawl, slowly, toward the closest location that glowed with light. There could be shelter, or food, or people, or safety.

by Belinda Roddie Even her smile creaked. Everything about her creaked. It was uncanny because I was certain she wasn't any older than sixty. I would expect women or men in their seventies onward to start getting rusty around their hinges or squeaky in their joints. But she in particular had aged too fast. When she sat down on the couch, everything squealed, like the brakes of a car wearing down very quickly on a bumpy country road. This was my wife's aunt Zoley, the woman we were meant to look after while my inlaws were away on their annual, stuffy vacation to the east coast. Where we were, it hadn't rained adequately in a good seven years. My once everyday routine of taking a five minute shower was now every other day. I substituted cider and whiskey for water a lot. My wife insisted on bringing her aunt fresh avocados, even though they were twice the cost of what they used to be since we had met. We would split the things open and scoop their innards out into bowls...

My hopes had been flattened upon entering the hospital room. Evan, contrary to everyone else's optimism, was getting worse, not better. I swore that the number of tubes surrounding him increased, the hum of the machines keeping him alive becoming more and more unbearable the closer I stepped to him. It was all the more disorienting, therefore, when he smiled at me from beneath his feeding apparatus and flashed me a lazy thumbs up.