I have a good feeling about this;my belly is a butterfly cage.
I’d call my circumstances a fair trade:one with lips of cigarette smoke for one whose skin tastes of happiness.
Category: Competition
Competition
Tandem Part Two
Claire dropped her bag and held up her weapon for both Tom and Jill to see. She rushed to Jill and hacked away at the screaming young woman with the razor sharp edge of her shiny brand new machete.
Tandem Part One
When Claire walked into her apartment she saw Kelly, her best friend and roommate, chopped up on the floor with her crazy ex-boyfriend and escaped mental patient Tom standing over her bloody body holding a spinning chainsaw.
Claire turned to run and she bumped into Jill, Tom’s new girlfriend and fellow institutional escapee, who was holding a shiny silver axe.
A New Cell
Ever thought about how prisons resemble small cities? I’m going to make it a goal to vacation at one of these private locations.
grief
I don’t usually smoke.
In this moment, however, the only thing more appropriate than a cigarette would be for it to be my funeral instead.
Beaches
I’d shake it all out – watch it fall out like runny, shiny, smooth, glassy beads. The sand in my shoes warm from the sun that played all afternoon on the golden beaches –
I would run my fingers through my hair wet at the nape of my neck.
Mother
She is trapped in a gilded cage. Trapped shut in a cage of her own making – one that she refuses to own.
Swimmers at the local swimming pool
I used to be one of them – a show off, fast, showing off my moves, floating belly side up like a poached egg but now my new body is soft with body fat, it is still a comfort fit although it feels so different when I see myself in passing mirrors.
It feels as if I am staring at my face in water; in a million different pieces that somehow does not quite have the right fit.
Half in love
My mother has stretched out her legs and put them
on my fathers lap -‘He is mine. Stay away or go away this is our private time.’
So I disappear to my room – she doesn’t have to say much to make me the Outsider.
Unscheduled Performance
The old man stopped in the center of the crowded department store before he took off his clothes and did a little dance.
The panicked shoppers fled and three mannequins in the back turned their heads and vomited sawdust onto the floor.
The Accomplice
Her footsteps loosened the aged mahogany floor when she stumbled into her room one night; and for the sake of not interrupting her roommate she did not turn on the lights. With not a care for the couple’s rustling and kissing adjacent to her, she let the large volume of rum from a prior dinner party coax her to sleep–without knowing that she was the accomplice for her roommate’s murder.
Bedtime Story
“The end,” he said. And then the sun went out.
Chinese Proverb
“If you seek revenge, dig two graves,” said Confucius. I only dug one, because they’ll never be able to pry my hands from his neck.
Meltdown!
I asked, why is it that this calendar and the one behind it have both been modified so that each month has ten days? “I was raised to go into the fallout shelter after the tenth day…”
Lies Aren’t Funny
I hate it when activist writers take cheap shots at their political rivals in their fiction stories.
You just alienated half of your audience, assholes!
Disconnect
Consequently, the 2000 inhabitants stationed in Antarctica assigned with research tasks failed to send an urgent transmission because of the storm’s damage to the main satellite:”(34147) a cold-adapted plant that decays 6hrs after growing in a theoretical millennium has been discovered. Conclusively we found the species in the family negating every virus in existence.”
Dr. Jackass
Tim bit furiously at his nails, teeth marks making way for a bloodied mess beneath. He stopped as the doctor walked in and said, “We’re not just sure, we’re HIV positive.”
Schizo? Really?
The demon was sticking its tongue at me, taunting and prodding, so I grabbed hold of his neck and strangled until his eyes bulged from his sockets and his tongue lolled, still and silent. Then it was just a baby and I wondered what happened to my meds.
Fire
I get up, lean out of my bedroom window with elbows firm on the sill and fire the gun. I hear the magical, instantaneous ping and rattle of the pellet hitting the can as it falls of the fence; I return to bed and drink my tea satisfied.
Turn of the ankle
In the time it took to inhale I landed, hit the ground and screamed – first in pain and second in the knowledge that the season was over.
The season was over before it had begun, thanks to the unlikely turn of an ankle.