My Cardboard Balcony

Nonchalance & Nicotine by Belinda Roddie Sam chooses Saturdays for when we share smokes and pretend not to give a fuck about anything, from science to the world ending. She says if we think too hard, we could grill our own brains, holding them like limp steaks to hot iron grids, searing memories we don't want into our raw psyches. I gave up cigarettes ten years ago, so I drink while the others inhale the ashes of the city. I got the inclination for booze in my belly from my father, who got it from his mother, who got it from her Depression-era aunt who fought against Prohibition like a bandit, just so she could get happy off of something better than a tub of homemade gin. The eyes of steel golems are open and expose scurrying ghosts behind office windows, fragile fingers scuttling across plastic keyboards. Carbon mingling with silicon. Sam tells a joke. Everyone laughs. I smell the tobacco in their dry mouths. Someone blurts something about somet...

From where I sat at the bar, I could easily notice the pointed glances that the girl in the cowboy hat and leather jacket was shooting me. I wasn't quite sure what she was drinking - rum and coke? Whiskey bourbon? - but I knew it must have been strong, maybe even giving her a right kick in the teeth, because she seemed on edge and ready to fight someone. I looked over at my cousin, who was busy flirting with the bartender, and itched for another beer.

"Back to the van!" I screamed, and broke into a run before anyone else could snap their heads to look at me in confusion. My heart was rumbling like a jaunty car blowing past the speed limit as I hurtled toward my father's old broken down vehicle, the spray paint from an unknown vandal still streaking its white side with reds and blacks. I didn't hear the monster growl, but pretty soon, I heard my friends' footsteps, too, and their cries of terror.

by Belinda Roddie And so she ate them. And there was nothing left but sticky bones. The warmth of devoured flesh settled in her stomach. Her head buzzed with the flavor, the ecstasy of the experience. Everything had been perfect - the texture, the taste, the temperature. There had even been a perfect heat to it, as it were. The cooked carcasses of the dead had burned down her throat in such a satisfying way. She burped, and she laughed. As she sucked her thumbs clean, her friends looked at her warily. One of them had his head in his hands. The other tapped a long fingernail against her glass. "Um,..you sure you don't need a napkin?" "Nah, I'm cool," she replied, before hollering to the frazzled waiter. "Yo, Joseph! Twelve more buffalo wings over here!"

I hid inside a tree trunk because it was hollow, and I waited for the men dressed in shadows to pass by. Their boots made loud, scraping noises as their pointed toes ripped up the plants, tossing dirt and broken roots into the air like Mother Nature's confetti. I prayed there weren't spiders crawling around me in my shelter, but the smell of sap calmed me, like I was breathing in the odor of maple syrup at my father's cabin.

Whew. Another busy week. Don't get me wrong, it's very fulfilling for me, teaching and all that. But my goodness, does it require a lot of work. Also, in other news, my goodness, water is wet. Still doing my best to write. I've been editing some older projects of mine, such as my second novel, and seeing where it goes. I'm hoping also to participate in NaNoWriMo in the next couple of months. ...Yep. It's September, all right. Take it easy on me, dear passage of time. Have a great night and a great weekend, everyone.

The Family Heirloom by Belinda Roddie Your heart sat, still beating, in a tarnished brass box.