My Cardboard Balcony

Literary Arousal by Belinda Roddie So much ecstasy can occur in the eleventh chapter of a book where two lovers intertwine and your fingers slip beneath your beltline, massaging the tender shadows beneath. The lips part: Tongue extended, breath short, little bubbles of sound only bursting once they make contact with the nearest window pane. Read on, my dear. Let your body shudder from the black and blue, the text leaving contusions on your hypothalamus. All light bursts from that cone, and with a smile, you flip the pages with warm and sticky hands.

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Radial Tunnel Syndrome by Belinda Roddie To tie your nerves up in knots - to pinch them, like a garden hose, so that the circulation is reduced to a constricted trickle during an autumn drought. The fingers blessed by numbness caused by angels' hidden needles, just in time for the rising temperatures so that you don't feel the heat stroke caressing the sweaty crook of your arm.

How long has the queen been imprisoned? Seven years? Seventeen? Is there gray in her hair and wrinkles beneath her eyes, or is she still young and spry in a darkened cell? Has she been muted, or does she still sing? Her melodies and anthems are missed throughout the land. The king's been dead for too long now - how much longer until we get our true ruler back? I've stopped counting the days; I simply press my body up against the window nearest to the tower, hoping to hear a crescendo of music.

The speech was meant to be symbolic, but everyone took it literally. The real carnage started as soon as he said the word "carnage," which he claimed was a metaphor. But the metaphor had grown arms and legs, and it wielded a sharp ax and a butcher's cleaver and split the skulls of the rallygoers open like rotten fruit. Their innards spilled out, but only in a trickle - there wasn't much brain to begin with.

by Belinda Roddie The mind of a madman is a very dangerous place to be. In those folds of gray matter, words go in and screams come out, and all the dreams stored there sit with harsh laughter weeping from their pores. There are craters, pits you can fall into and never be able to scramble out of; the walls are still slippery for you to get a firm grip, and you risk asphyxiation once the folds of thoughts finally enclose around your fragile body. The cerebral cortex becomes a vortex for grand scheme plans for redemption - or domination. The cerebellum can only bring physical balance, not mental or emotional. And there's still a little bit of aggressive T-Rex in those stem synapses. And then comes the junk, hard in the vein of the madman. What is meant to sedate makes him more active. He runs marathons at midnight in boxers and gets a tattoo on his chest that says, "I Only Have Days Left." He leaves the parlor in flames. No one knows where he got the matches. I pack...

I wanted to believe that it was real. That it was happening. That the human race was standing on the precipice of something extraordinary. I didn't want it to be faked or staged. And yet, there I was, staring at the multiple television screens suspended above my head. Above the population's head. People all milling about like cattle as the propaganda entered through our ears and noses and came out from our mouths in artificial jubilation.