My Cardboard Balcony

Get Out Of Here, Kid by Belinda Roddie Skullman's out looking for you, boy. He's dressed in black and pissed as Hell. He's carrying two Colts as slick as your hips, and he's ready to stud your waistline with steel. You better think about rushing your ass down to the border, hide yourself in a bag of grain and get shipped to Mexico. You'll be fed like the cattle on a small, remote farm, and when you're old enough, you'll head back with your belt drooping and your eyes blazing under a cowboy hat, so you can jam a shotgun barrel up Skullman's bony nostril and fire three times in a row just to make sure he's dead.

Matthew kept a little buddha in his desk - a red, carved trinket he had bought at a stand in Thailand, and already collecting dust like it was accumulating a new robe. Matthew grew older and forgot about the figurine - that is, until he was pushing the old furniture to the garage when he heard a rattling in the top drawer. He curiously fished the buddha out of its hiding place and held it in his weathered hand, not noticing at first that his vision was beginning to blur.

A Victim Of Unknown Circumstances by Belinda Roddie Wearing red gloves kept the scars away from the sun, so they stayed white and raw and rubbery, like the pith of an orange. Buttoning the coat up to the last brass brooch kept the cold out when standing in the river, and the boots with steel zippers kept the water from clogging the dying skin between the rows of crackling, wood-like toes. Eaten away by the elements, I remained clothed and concealed. Still, she saw my face from time to time, and her kisses made the scabs sting and threaten to erode. I was always patchy from my own decay - a skeleton that never actually revealed the brittle bone beneath, a husk you couldn't even suck marrow from if you were hungry enough. But she laid into me, until she stripped the leather from my fingers, and the air made my flesh gasp for sustenance - pink, puckered, but never fully healed.

"Sean made me a mixtape." "Really?" "Yeah. Isn't that adorable?" "Dude," scoffed Roger, "it's 2016. Who makes mixtapes anymore?" "Romantic people, that's who!" barked Lawrence before disappearing into his room. Sheryl laughed and went to the fridge for a bottle of beer. "Let him have this, Rog'," she coaxed. "He hasn't gotten any dick since college."

I had never seen Amber's face turn such a shade of violet. It reminded me of when her daughter, Andrea, walked in with her hair streaked like the tail end of the rainbow. Like Roy G. Biv vomited onto her head, and the only color that wouldn't wash out was the purple. But boy, was Andrea happy. Fourteen years old, walking in with those torn jeans and black Pink Floyd T-shirt, sporting that hyper-colored hairdo like there was no tomorrow, and now her mom, two years later, was emanating that glorious hue.

by Belinda Roddie The house was sentient, but very stupid. Sure, it tried to be helpful, but I had had enough of hearing the garage door open every time I flushed the toilet. I was also tired of the rumbling "Sorry" from the roof when the doors would lock just behind me - of course, when I had forgotten my key. So I sold it to some old man named Ivan down the road and told him it was haunted. That'll make me giggle, at least, from my much more inanimate condo. This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.

Ceramics was Jermaine's craft. Glass blowing was Kathleen's. Both Tom and Sam worked with gems and precious stones, molding them into intricate strings and circles of color for the people of fashion to adorn themselves. Charlie and Linda enjoyed working with oil paints, and I was an up and coming welder.