My Cardboard Balcony

Raccoons on the Road by Belinda Roddie It was as if they all hit the pavement at the same time. Their masks pulled on, they shuffled across the asphalt in clicks and scrambles. They didn't see the cars coming, but they heard the roar, and they smelled the smoldering rubber. I wear my own mask as I drive by their flattened carcasses. From three dimensions to two dimensions, these overgrown rodents have escaped their corporeal heists for a great big trash can in the sky. And somewhere, they're gnawing on an apple core, working out their ethereal jaws. I might tattoo the shadows around my eyes. The odor of my engine is both stale and steel. I am a factory worker wishing I could be nocturnal - breaking off from the industry and scrounging for meager sustenance, leftover luxuries tossed by people sipping soup from quartz ladles with their faces free of rascal's paint.

Someone told me to jump off a cliff, so I did. Broke quite a few bones, but I survived. When I went back to school about a month later, I walked up to my classmate and said, "Okay. Jumped off a cliff. Want to pay my hospital bills?" She couldn't stop staring at me. I mean, c'mon. I love her more than anything. Of course I was going to do anything she told me to do. But then she started slowly backing away, and I realized that everyone else seemed perturbed by me.

After Halloween Pumpkin by Belinda Roddie People easily dismiss the tragic mess of a Jack made a wreck by a hooligan's baseball bat. But its lantern still burns for the next holiday when its smile is intact and its eyes glow with life.

I'll be a star. You just watch. I'll dye my hair purple and wear suspenders. I'll learn to tap dance and do impressions of Robin Williams and Al Pacino. I'll keep bottles of glitter in my pockets so that, when I want to feel extra sparkly, I'll pop them open and let the storm surround me like I'm in the dust bowl, only prettier and less detrimental to Southwestern agriculture. I will march onto Broadway with a handmade diploma, and with every time I'm shooed out, I'll only become more insistent until they just can't get rid of me.

There was no tiger burning bright in the forest of the night. In fact, there was no light at all. The fearful symmetry that William Blake had described so simply and so perfectly were in the trees, the outlining of the night sky like a mathematical equation forming a fearsome face. We all stood together in the clearing and looked out toward the circle of leaves and branches around us. We could see no exit, and this was no maze, either. Yet we were still trapped within the humid, toxic darkness.

by Belinda Roddie "The baby was born a clown." "Really? That's your best scary six word story?" "Oh, c'mon, dude. He was born a clown. Not only is it scary, it's a wretched existence." "I know the jello shots in skull glasses were a bad idea." "Okay, then. You got a better six word spooky story? Tell me." "I will." "Go ahead!" "Shut up first!" "..." "All of your booze is gone." "...What?" "All of your booze is gone." " What?!" "That's it, John! That's my scary six word story!" " Are you serious?" "Um, yeah?" " Why is the booze gone?!" "Wha - dude! It's not gone!" " Not the booze!" "It's not gone! It was just my story!" " GIVE ME MY BOOZE!" "I will knock you down with my plastic baton, man!"...

As the trick-or-treaters reached toward the dish of candy, Missus Lancaster realized that something was very awry. There seemed to be a cold wind blowing from the clustered group of little costumed crusaders, the way it billowed across their capes and gowns and chilled the air in front of them. Watching as Charles from two houses down snatched a handful of mini-Snickers, Missus Lancaster was mute as the nine-year-old boy peered at her with a fanged smile and said, "Happy Halloween!" in an animalistic, very not human snarl.