My Cardboard Balcony

A Peppermint For Charlie by Belinda Roddie "A peppermint for Charlie!" cried the small and sprightly man, fetching from his knapsack a red and white sweet for the four foot tall girl, as her brothers all laughed and rolled back their eyes. But Charlie hadn't asked for much this year for Christmas, and with a large smile, she took the candy. "This is just enough for me this holiday," she told them. "While you ask for toys and new video games and remote controlled cars, I have my books to read already, and I know the names of all the other children whose sad looks ought to be erased by the gifts meant for me because I think they deserve them more."

I tried to withhold my judgment of the customer as he berated my coworker about saying, "Happy Holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas!" I was unsuccessful in doing so. Being both off-shift and on-call at the café was more than enough to possibly excuse my behavior and avoid my getting fired. So I approached the red-faced man screaming about "political correctness" and "God's wrath," popped off the plastic lid of my coffee cup, and poured the steaming hot blackness down the front of the jerk's shirt.

'Tis The Season by Belinda Roddie The marshmallows are warm and sticky between my fingers. The chocolate is melting against my teeth. Here we are again by the fire while the rain arrives on the patio, each of us with a different Christmas song stuck in our heads.

Once a fun, engaging experience, Mister Charleton's math class had stagnated into a cold, monotonous part of the day, the stillness of the room proof enough that all the livelihood had been sucked away from the air as if slurped through a wide, noisy straw. And every student knew why. It was no secret that Charleton's husband, the ever charming and jovial Alan Schmidt, had left him after fifteen years, having participated in multiple affairs behind the poor man's back.

Festive Footwear by Belinda Roddie I didn't have a Christmas stocking, so I hung my uncle's dirty sock up by the fireplace. It's lacking its companion, so he won't miss it, and it's big enough (his shoe size is 13). When I ran down for my treats, all I found was old cheese in the blackened toe. I guess that's what happens when I gross out Santa.

Eileen was asleep for the entire duration of the show, but I was riveted. Victor was an excellent dancer. Every time he glided across the stage, every bend of his knees and slant of his ankles, kept me alert and rapt. By the time the performance was over and I have worn out my hands from clapping so hard, I shook my girlfriend away just before she was about to start snoring. "What'd I miss?" she asked groggily. "Everything?" "Yep."

In Case Of An Emergency by Belinda Roddie Warren drop kicked seven painkillers into his mouth and chewed loudly enough for the king of Denmark to hear from his bed. As he settled himself into the bathtub, he thought he saw double helixes spiraling around his head, neurons thrashing under his skull, desperate to free themselves from their cerebral prison. And outside, his mother bashed on the door with a baseball bat, screaming for him to get out, because the fire was spreading upstairs, but her son was in a medically induced dreamland where a unicorn was already carrying him to safety.