My Cardboard Balcony

And Hephaestus Held Me by Belinda Roddie You kept your hand buried in my hip. "I am the Other," you whispered into my ear, and the tinnitus started up like an alarm going off in my brain. I could taste your immortality on my tongue. Wine and smoke. Your legs folded in a crucifix against the skeleton of your wheelchair. Below the awning, we caught the glow of a police car's blue and red eyes as it sped right past us. Your grip grew tighter, and suddenly the heat of iron was in my mouth. You smelted my senses, extracted precious ore from each flaring nostril. You pulled a rotten tooth out of my head and crushed it under your wheels after it had tumbled to the ashen pavement below. "You are the Other," you whispered to me again. You and I, we and no one else. Your enunciation glued to my synapses. The breath of a blacksmith burned my already puckered skin. You took me from my father's shop then, made me carry you up the fire escape ...

No update on the OneWord website today. Oh, well!

My Empire by Belinda Roddie I wash my hair with golden linens before rising from the basin of the sun. My servants await me; they have dragged my silver oxen across my fields, and are now laden with the literal fruits of their labor. People once said that a post-scarcity world was impossible, but I have remolded the earth to serve me with its spoils. I wade in wine and swallow chocolate by the spoonful. The meats and cheeses laid before me are only shared with a portrait of my beautiful wife. This was how I made my empire: When the apocalypse subsided, I scraped away the radioactive ash and found fresh soil that I and those few survivors tended to. Trees grew again. The air grew colder. We felt strong breaths return to our aching diaphragms. One by one, the last remnants of humanity died but me. I was not human anymore. Not with this mutated body and soul. I have crafted my attendants out of clay and stone. For heartless golems, they take orders while still ...

"Do you really think barbed wire around the doggy door is really that good of an extra safeguard?" asked Chelsea, as I proceeded dump the spiky stuff onto the floor of the garage. "Hey, Buster has an aversion to sharp objects. He'll be fine." I started scouting for metal cutters as Chelsea rolled her eyes. "Why not just electrify the damn thing while you're at it, and we'll end up with a dead dog?"

Our Manifest Destiny by Belinda Roddie It used to be that you went west for rivers that dyed your fingers gold when you dipped your dry hands into them, for hills that glittered under both the sun's chariot and the moon's cradle, and for valleys untouched by the hooves of tamed steeds and the wooden wheels of ambition. You went west when you wanted a handful of acres of land to build your house on, till your soil on, the smell of fertility lingering like Mother Nature's rising bosom against your cushioned nose. You looked out at the crest of the ocean as if you were honoring the foamy crown of a great god, who watched passively over you as you grew your children's futures out of a bag of seeds you brought with you on the long journey over to the coast. You slept in the hulls of ships that stank of urine, vomit, and desperate dreams as stale as whiskey caught in your old man's throat. You got your knuckles stamped with ink that stained you fo...

There was honey on her apron, and there was sugar in her hair. The pot glowed with sticky sweetness, and the smell was everywhere. I inhaled it through one nostril, and I found myself in bliss, and I swooped my little baker up, and we exchanged a kiss.

Daddy and Linds caught two salmon at the mouth of river, two hours after sunrise. When they came back, their boots were clotted with mud and debris from the water. Their hair was flat and unkempt against their floppy canvas hats. Daddy carried the rods and tack boxes, still half-full with bait, and Linds carried the fish - long and lanky, eyes bulging from the sides of their scaly, permanently shocked faces.