Notch and Cages
By Lyla Abi-Saab
The air is warm and still. Your eyes are blank and seemingly empty. There is a clearness in them, as those of a blind woman, a cerulean blue beneath deep brown. They are watching something, somewhere. Somewhere unknown to the outsider, something dark enough to swallow up the most innocent, dancing, brightest of eyes. Your chest barely rises, and falls, shuddering.
In the distance, perhaps miles off, you hear a wailing. It may or may not be a kitten. It may or may not be your father. There is cold blood coursing through your veins, and you are a murderer. An imaginary knife twists in your insides and you let the wound run. An imaginary pool of red engulfs you, and you let the wound run. In the far distance, a faucet is shut and stairs creak to a stillness, the day resumes but you know all the threads to its fabric.
You stand at the kitchen counter. It is night and a spoon stirs and clinks against a mug in the measured, artificial light. A thud shakes the air without warning and suddenly you are shrieking. A limp arm faces upward against beige carpet behind the open closet door, you hear the sound of the stairs again, faster this time, detached screams ripping out of you like bits of a marred soul. You run blindly off, pulse speeding and suddenly warm beneath your paper skin, doubled over, body shaking, bile rising up a worn throat with your heartbeat.
You stagger down against cold tile, hugging bony knees to your trembling chin, tears gushing, rivulets upon pale cheeks, drivel spewing and gathering to drip at the lip like a small, pathetic child, scared shitless.
You will yourself upright, tremoring, an earthquake. A fissure barely managing to split open guides your bare feet back to the kitchen. I am okay, he says. I just got dizzy. Nauseous. A left arm is clenched and released. Your hands, violently unsteady, make him tea, the hiss of boiling water just barely drowning out the seething whisper of “murderer, murderer,” in your brain.
- - -
I am a studying writer currently living in Hampton, Virginia. Aside from writing, I enjoy waving madly at strangers, interesting socks, and places of high altitude.
By Lyla Abi-Saab
The air is warm and still. Your eyes are blank and seemingly empty. There is a clearness in them, as those of a blind woman, a cerulean blue beneath deep brown. They are watching something, somewhere. Somewhere unknown to the outsider, something dark enough to swallow up the most innocent, dancing, brightest of eyes. Your chest barely rises, and falls, shuddering.
In the distance, perhaps miles off, you hear a wailing. It may or may not be a kitten. It may or may not be your father. There is cold blood coursing through your veins, and you are a murderer. An imaginary knife twists in your insides and you let the wound run. An imaginary pool of red engulfs you, and you let the wound run. In the far distance, a faucet is shut and stairs creak to a stillness, the day resumes but you know all the threads to its fabric.
You stand at the kitchen counter. It is night and a spoon stirs and clinks against a mug in the measured, artificial light. A thud shakes the air without warning and suddenly you are shrieking. A limp arm faces upward against beige carpet behind the open closet door, you hear the sound of the stairs again, faster this time, detached screams ripping out of you like bits of a marred soul. You run blindly off, pulse speeding and suddenly warm beneath your paper skin, doubled over, body shaking, bile rising up a worn throat with your heartbeat.
You stagger down against cold tile, hugging bony knees to your trembling chin, tears gushing, rivulets upon pale cheeks, drivel spewing and gathering to drip at the lip like a small, pathetic child, scared shitless.
You will yourself upright, tremoring, an earthquake. A fissure barely managing to split open guides your bare feet back to the kitchen. I am okay, he says. I just got dizzy. Nauseous. A left arm is clenched and released. Your hands, violently unsteady, make him tea, the hiss of boiling water just barely drowning out the seething whisper of “murderer, murderer,” in your brain.
- - -
I am a studying writer currently living in Hampton, Virginia. Aside from writing, I enjoy waving madly at strangers, interesting socks, and places of high altitude.
My Tender Compassion
By James Dye
Get rid of foreign people,
purify yourself with new clothes,
turn your mind a few turns
to change your heart's station.
I'm perplexed but I will go,
whether confined or set free,
to a new situation.
I'm not sure what way
or what happened
to destroy this world.
The light was near my face
of darkness. Who changed days
into nights of not what I desire?
I feel remorse...
nearly destroyed,
but I'm not hardheaded
as a rock.
I'll do what is right.
I'll continue to live
A life barely fair.
Though I want a new name,
to change the color of my skin,
maybe add a few spots,
and stand like straw
in the wind.
But I won't
be blown away.
I'll never change.
- - -
James Dye is a college student working on his English major. He's appeared in a number of journals and anthologies since he started publishing in 2009. When he's not writing, he spends his free time catching meteorites and wooing his girlfriend Alicia.
By James Dye
Get rid of foreign people,
purify yourself with new clothes,
turn your mind a few turns
to change your heart's station.
I'm perplexed but I will go,
whether confined or set free,
to a new situation.
I'm not sure what way
or what happened
to destroy this world.
The light was near my face
of darkness. Who changed days
into nights of not what I desire?
I feel remorse...
nearly destroyed,
but I'm not hardheaded
as a rock.
I'll do what is right.
I'll continue to live
A life barely fair.
Though I want a new name,
to change the color of my skin,
maybe add a few spots,
and stand like straw
in the wind.
But I won't
be blown away.
I'll never change.
- - -
James Dye is a college student working on his English major. He's appeared in a number of journals and anthologies since he started publishing in 2009. When he's not writing, he spends his free time catching meteorites and wooing his girlfriend Alicia.
Snowflakes
By Ian Chung
The corridor had a single bare bulb, glaringly bright and swinging from the ceiling. He quietly made his way towards the steel door at the end, curiosity having got the better of him at last. Through the cracks around the door, a muted haze of colours bled through. Grasping its handle, he pulled and it swung open easily. The room was dimly lit, but his eyes slowly adjusted to the faint glow and he noticed that its walls were studded with pinpricks of colour, in every shade and hue known to man. Still more incredible were the objects that the lights were illuminating. They were snowflakes, hundreds of them sticking out from the walls, poised on long, thin needles, their icy shapes glittering like rare jewels as the lights suffused them. It was as if the stars in the night sky had been magnified, only to be revealed as a vast constellation of frozen water. Some of the shapes he recognised as the familiar stellar dendrites that featured as decorations on so many Christmas trees. These were marvellously complex, each one unique in its crystalline patterning, many so delicately wrought that they had the appearance of hexagonal ferns. Others came in the form of plates, always cleanly divided into six identical sectors and no less beautiful. It was the more unusual specimens, however, which fascinated him when his roaming gaze encountered them. Some of these had formed as columns, some capped at each end with a thin sheet, some with air bubbles trapped in them that tapered to a point. The shorter capped columns looked almost like glass thimbles, only missing finely spun thread to complete the illusion. Then there were rosettes formed out of bullet-shaped snowflakes, joined at their tips to form peculiarly fragile shapes that jutted at odd angles. Finally, there were the needles, almost indistinguishable from their metal cousins, except for the way in which they caught each pinpoint radiance of colour and threw it back to the eye, piercing. Reaching out a hand to the nearest one, he was about to touch it when the door’s clicking shut startled him, causing him to prick his index finger, his blood forming tiny black drops on the floor as the snowflake shattered and began to melt beside it. 'So. You've found my collection. How do you like it?'
- - -
Ian Chung reads English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Warwick, where he divides his time between drinking (moderately), buying and reading books (excessively), and working on his degree (sparingly).
By Ian Chung
The corridor had a single bare bulb, glaringly bright and swinging from the ceiling. He quietly made his way towards the steel door at the end, curiosity having got the better of him at last. Through the cracks around the door, a muted haze of colours bled through. Grasping its handle, he pulled and it swung open easily. The room was dimly lit, but his eyes slowly adjusted to the faint glow and he noticed that its walls were studded with pinpricks of colour, in every shade and hue known to man. Still more incredible were the objects that the lights were illuminating. They were snowflakes, hundreds of them sticking out from the walls, poised on long, thin needles, their icy shapes glittering like rare jewels as the lights suffused them. It was as if the stars in the night sky had been magnified, only to be revealed as a vast constellation of frozen water. Some of the shapes he recognised as the familiar stellar dendrites that featured as decorations on so many Christmas trees. These were marvellously complex, each one unique in its crystalline patterning, many so delicately wrought that they had the appearance of hexagonal ferns. Others came in the form of plates, always cleanly divided into six identical sectors and no less beautiful. It was the more unusual specimens, however, which fascinated him when his roaming gaze encountered them. Some of these had formed as columns, some capped at each end with a thin sheet, some with air bubbles trapped in them that tapered to a point. The shorter capped columns looked almost like glass thimbles, only missing finely spun thread to complete the illusion. Then there were rosettes formed out of bullet-shaped snowflakes, joined at their tips to form peculiarly fragile shapes that jutted at odd angles. Finally, there were the needles, almost indistinguishable from their metal cousins, except for the way in which they caught each pinpoint radiance of colour and threw it back to the eye, piercing. Reaching out a hand to the nearest one, he was about to touch it when the door’s clicking shut startled him, causing him to prick his index finger, his blood forming tiny black drops on the floor as the snowflake shattered and began to melt beside it. 'So. You've found my collection. How do you like it?'
- - -
Ian Chung reads English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Warwick, where he divides his time between drinking (moderately), buying and reading books (excessively), and working on his degree (sparingly).
The Man Who Fell Out of His Head
By Evander Arnage
The night he was struck by a bolt of lightening Lewis Lippit was retrieving a string of freshly washed socks he’d left hanging outside the kitchen window that looked down onto the trash strewn courtyard of his four story tenement house.
He had heard the thunder rolling in and felt the blue flickers of the distant lightening on his cheek while he was stooped over the bathroom sink trimming his perpetually uneven mustache and had ran to get the socks before the big drops fell.
They were thick white socks, the sort you could wear with anything, even a jet black tuxedo suit which Lewis happened to possess from the wedding of his sister to an irritable Italian mobster and failed Broadway actor who insisted that all the men in the ceremony wear the same outfit or risk being shot in the left foot with a small caliber pocket pistol which he carried with him at all times. Now, many years later Lewis still enjoyed wearing the suit on quiet Monday evenings after the laundry was dry and his socks contained their optimum quotient of trapped ionic air between their cotton fibers. He liked to put them on and take long gliding strides down the hardwood hallway pretending he was a retired Paul Anka crooning mournful ballads in some failed edition of the Ice Capades. It was like riding two little cushions of air.
Just before the lightening hit he was thinking ‘what drama it will be to glide around the apartment in this broiling tempest!’
He was leaning over the windowsill, his gut spilling out of his frayed and moth eaten cummerbund, pulling a sock from a weathered clothespin when it happened. There was no sound. He felt only a rush of air somewhere between his ears like the fleeting gulp of a vacuum sucking through a heavy blockage. It was sudden and inexplicable and all at once he felt as though he had become unglued from every sense of his body and was now somewhere outside of himself, near but far, everywhere and exactly there but mostly somewhere about the floor and very very small. He realized all at once that his perspective was now emanating directly out of the sock he had just been holding and surrounding him was a great ocean of inert limbo-ness that washed up on all sides.
He was struck by a shrill and dread-filled truth: this was his reality. He was, and always been, this sock and what he had known up until now, his life as a man, his apartment his entire past- childhood, teenage years, college, jobs, travel, relationships, struggles and desires- had all been a long and vivid dream, lasting perhaps only a few moments in sock time and he was now awakened, back to his one true presence, this particulate clump of white cotton fiber that had spontaneously developed sentience and then projected itself into the unconscious realm to imagine ‘Lewis the human being’ but was now back from its reverie, to reclaim its normal state of inconsequential molecules without free will or physical mobility or intelligent intent.
Lewis was clenched by the panic of a foregone certainty. It was so clear and true and immediate that he felt a powerful anguish for the loss of the dream life he once lived as Lewis Lippit the struggling trombonist and failed lover, who measured his worth by all the things he said he’d do but never did. Lewis Lippit who stayed up late at night doing nothing and anything to avoid the interminable hunger of his regrets.
Then with nothing else to do for it he accepted the futility of lamenting what had never really been and made peace with his new state, his one true reality, realizing as he did how simple and serene a reality it was. To not have the worries of the human body as it aged and the human experiences as they multiplied and became more convoluted, the ceaseless labors for money, relationships, status, possessions, the fear of pain, mortality, loneliness. He would need none of those now, he was simply an inanimate piece of the physical landscape with no responsibility and no power to become anything more or anything less. He could satisfy himself with the essential imperative to be- and that was all.
A great, euphoric tide washed over him like he had never known, a warm satisfaction of the sort he had been searching for his entire life. So fulfilling was it that he no longer even felt the need to identify himself as himself, or as an individual at all. He was simply matter-awareness. There was no more need for an ego, the burden of purpose had been lifted from him and he now floated in a serenity of blissful mundaneness. He was sock.
Lewis was allowed to enjoy this profound experience for only a brief moment though, before he was violently regurgitated out of the sock perspective and came to in a coughing, sputtering fit, back inside his body which felt stiff and smelled of burnt hair. He could hear light jazz music playing on the radio in the living room and the sound of the rain pattering against the window above his head. The sock was still clutched tightly in his fist and smoke emanated from a black scorch mark in the sole.
Later he would wrap the sock in a silk handkerchief and save it in the bottom of his dresser where he would take it out sometimes on anxious nights and yearn achingly for its uncomplicated existence before satisfying himself with the thought that in the end there would only be transition.
- - -
I am a freelance copy/creative writer from Canada currently working on my first book, an illustrated anthology of strange and quirky short stories entitled The Human Fable. Currently I am traveling and have no permanent address so my email is my only means of reliable contact. My preferred pen name is Evander Arnage, which I use to avoid paying alimony and bad loan shark debts.
But not really...
By Evander Arnage
The night he was struck by a bolt of lightening Lewis Lippit was retrieving a string of freshly washed socks he’d left hanging outside the kitchen window that looked down onto the trash strewn courtyard of his four story tenement house.
He had heard the thunder rolling in and felt the blue flickers of the distant lightening on his cheek while he was stooped over the bathroom sink trimming his perpetually uneven mustache and had ran to get the socks before the big drops fell.
They were thick white socks, the sort you could wear with anything, even a jet black tuxedo suit which Lewis happened to possess from the wedding of his sister to an irritable Italian mobster and failed Broadway actor who insisted that all the men in the ceremony wear the same outfit or risk being shot in the left foot with a small caliber pocket pistol which he carried with him at all times. Now, many years later Lewis still enjoyed wearing the suit on quiet Monday evenings after the laundry was dry and his socks contained their optimum quotient of trapped ionic air between their cotton fibers. He liked to put them on and take long gliding strides down the hardwood hallway pretending he was a retired Paul Anka crooning mournful ballads in some failed edition of the Ice Capades. It was like riding two little cushions of air.
Just before the lightening hit he was thinking ‘what drama it will be to glide around the apartment in this broiling tempest!’
He was leaning over the windowsill, his gut spilling out of his frayed and moth eaten cummerbund, pulling a sock from a weathered clothespin when it happened. There was no sound. He felt only a rush of air somewhere between his ears like the fleeting gulp of a vacuum sucking through a heavy blockage. It was sudden and inexplicable and all at once he felt as though he had become unglued from every sense of his body and was now somewhere outside of himself, near but far, everywhere and exactly there but mostly somewhere about the floor and very very small. He realized all at once that his perspective was now emanating directly out of the sock he had just been holding and surrounding him was a great ocean of inert limbo-ness that washed up on all sides.
He was struck by a shrill and dread-filled truth: this was his reality. He was, and always been, this sock and what he had known up until now, his life as a man, his apartment his entire past- childhood, teenage years, college, jobs, travel, relationships, struggles and desires- had all been a long and vivid dream, lasting perhaps only a few moments in sock time and he was now awakened, back to his one true presence, this particulate clump of white cotton fiber that had spontaneously developed sentience and then projected itself into the unconscious realm to imagine ‘Lewis the human being’ but was now back from its reverie, to reclaim its normal state of inconsequential molecules without free will or physical mobility or intelligent intent.
Lewis was clenched by the panic of a foregone certainty. It was so clear and true and immediate that he felt a powerful anguish for the loss of the dream life he once lived as Lewis Lippit the struggling trombonist and failed lover, who measured his worth by all the things he said he’d do but never did. Lewis Lippit who stayed up late at night doing nothing and anything to avoid the interminable hunger of his regrets.
Then with nothing else to do for it he accepted the futility of lamenting what had never really been and made peace with his new state, his one true reality, realizing as he did how simple and serene a reality it was. To not have the worries of the human body as it aged and the human experiences as they multiplied and became more convoluted, the ceaseless labors for money, relationships, status, possessions, the fear of pain, mortality, loneliness. He would need none of those now, he was simply an inanimate piece of the physical landscape with no responsibility and no power to become anything more or anything less. He could satisfy himself with the essential imperative to be- and that was all.
A great, euphoric tide washed over him like he had never known, a warm satisfaction of the sort he had been searching for his entire life. So fulfilling was it that he no longer even felt the need to identify himself as himself, or as an individual at all. He was simply matter-awareness. There was no more need for an ego, the burden of purpose had been lifted from him and he now floated in a serenity of blissful mundaneness. He was sock.
Lewis was allowed to enjoy this profound experience for only a brief moment though, before he was violently regurgitated out of the sock perspective and came to in a coughing, sputtering fit, back inside his body which felt stiff and smelled of burnt hair. He could hear light jazz music playing on the radio in the living room and the sound of the rain pattering against the window above his head. The sock was still clutched tightly in his fist and smoke emanated from a black scorch mark in the sole.
Later he would wrap the sock in a silk handkerchief and save it in the bottom of his dresser where he would take it out sometimes on anxious nights and yearn achingly for its uncomplicated existence before satisfying himself with the thought that in the end there would only be transition.
- - -
I am a freelance copy/creative writer from Canada currently working on my first book, an illustrated anthology of strange and quirky short stories entitled The Human Fable. Currently I am traveling and have no permanent address so my email is my only means of reliable contact. My preferred pen name is Evander Arnage, which I use to avoid paying alimony and bad loan shark debts.
But not really...
The Night I lost Harry
by Deryn Pittar
It was on a bright starry night that the travelling circus rolled into town. I lost Harry that night. Well I didn’t loose him in the sense that I took him out and purposely lost him, but I lost him nevertheless.
Up to that night we’d been best friends. Classmates from pre-school we did everything together. We were so close we could finish each others sentences, wear each others clothes, do each others homework - but we drew a line at sharing each others girlfriends. Our parents became close because they were constantly in touch with each other, checking on where Harry and I were. We were adept at keeping our stories the same, so on this particular night they thought we’d gone to the movies.
It was a shock to discover there were things about Harry I didn’t know. On our way to the movies Harry said. “Let’s go to the circus.”
At sixteen I was a bit past animals in cages, people walking tightropes and clowns with false noses. However, never one to turn down an opportunity to stare at a pretty girl in a revealing outfit, I agreed. If the posters were anything to go by there would be lots of women in revealing outfits and I was looking forward to the hormonal rush I’d get.
We didn’t get the best seats but we were inside the tent and that was all that mattered to Harry. He was fidgeting with excitement and it was while we were waiting for things to start that he told me his dream. All his life he’d wanted to belong to a circus. Ideally he wanted to be a high-wire performer or to train the big cats. The connection between the two desires completely eluded me, unless it was the adrenaline rush you’d obviously get from doing either for a living.
‘What about your planned career as a Dentist?”
Harry’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “That’s my folk’s idea. Anyone can drill teeth Chris. But not anyone can go into those cages with the cats, or walk a wire thirty feet in the air.”
I remember nodding. You couldn’t fault that logic, although his parents might try to.
The whole evening was fairly boring. Three mangy-looking lions, not an elephant in sight, lots of false noses and pathetic jokes but Harry was bouncing around in delight and thumping me on the arm when he thought something was especially funny. There was a small troupe of trapeze artists, stylish, great figures, lots of bust showing, so I just concentrated on them.
Harry hung back as we were leaving and I had to turn to wait for him.
‘You go on” he said, “I’m just going to see if I can talk to the Lion Tamer or the Ring Master.” He’d moved to one side against a caravan, and the crowd were parting as they walked around me. He was scuffing the dirt with his shoe and his head was turned back towards the Big Top. In the glow of the high candescent lights I could see the yearning in his face.
“Are you going to apply for a job?” I joked.
“I might,” he retorted, not happy with my sarcasm.
“Sure you’ll be O.K? - I’ll wait,” I offered.
He looked stubborn, chin out. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I trailed along with the departing crowd, through the streets, and home to bed. By midnight I was shaken awake. The phone had woken my parents. Harry’s folks were looking for him. I relayed my story, but I wasn’t allowed to go back to sleep. I joined the search; retraced my steps; retold my story a dozen times. No one had seen him. The circus people weren’t interested. The Lion tamer turned out to be the owner and also a clown and all he wanted to do was sleep. I knew how he felt.
I like to imagine Harry travelling the world, high on a tightrope somewhere. His folks don’t talk to my folks these days. They don’t talk to me either. Luckily I’d walked with Ellie Foster on the way home because the Police interviewed me several times.
No one believed me when I said Harry wanted to join the circus. I learnt that you can’t ever really know someone and I often wonder, even today, if the lions were hungry the next day
- - -
I have always loved words: playing with them, rearranging them. saying them, writing them in different orders. I write poetry, short fiction, and screenscripts. I have had success in all these fields and am currently creating a novella paranormal romance, which is very challenging. My silver hair and fine lines attest to my life's experiences.
by Deryn Pittar
It was on a bright starry night that the travelling circus rolled into town. I lost Harry that night. Well I didn’t loose him in the sense that I took him out and purposely lost him, but I lost him nevertheless.
Up to that night we’d been best friends. Classmates from pre-school we did everything together. We were so close we could finish each others sentences, wear each others clothes, do each others homework - but we drew a line at sharing each others girlfriends. Our parents became close because they were constantly in touch with each other, checking on where Harry and I were. We were adept at keeping our stories the same, so on this particular night they thought we’d gone to the movies.
It was a shock to discover there were things about Harry I didn’t know. On our way to the movies Harry said. “Let’s go to the circus.”
At sixteen I was a bit past animals in cages, people walking tightropes and clowns with false noses. However, never one to turn down an opportunity to stare at a pretty girl in a revealing outfit, I agreed. If the posters were anything to go by there would be lots of women in revealing outfits and I was looking forward to the hormonal rush I’d get.
We didn’t get the best seats but we were inside the tent and that was all that mattered to Harry. He was fidgeting with excitement and it was while we were waiting for things to start that he told me his dream. All his life he’d wanted to belong to a circus. Ideally he wanted to be a high-wire performer or to train the big cats. The connection between the two desires completely eluded me, unless it was the adrenaline rush you’d obviously get from doing either for a living.
‘What about your planned career as a Dentist?”
Harry’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “That’s my folk’s idea. Anyone can drill teeth Chris. But not anyone can go into those cages with the cats, or walk a wire thirty feet in the air.”
I remember nodding. You couldn’t fault that logic, although his parents might try to.
The whole evening was fairly boring. Three mangy-looking lions, not an elephant in sight, lots of false noses and pathetic jokes but Harry was bouncing around in delight and thumping me on the arm when he thought something was especially funny. There was a small troupe of trapeze artists, stylish, great figures, lots of bust showing, so I just concentrated on them.
Harry hung back as we were leaving and I had to turn to wait for him.
‘You go on” he said, “I’m just going to see if I can talk to the Lion Tamer or the Ring Master.” He’d moved to one side against a caravan, and the crowd were parting as they walked around me. He was scuffing the dirt with his shoe and his head was turned back towards the Big Top. In the glow of the high candescent lights I could see the yearning in his face.
“Are you going to apply for a job?” I joked.
“I might,” he retorted, not happy with my sarcasm.
“Sure you’ll be O.K? - I’ll wait,” I offered.
He looked stubborn, chin out. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I trailed along with the departing crowd, through the streets, and home to bed. By midnight I was shaken awake. The phone had woken my parents. Harry’s folks were looking for him. I relayed my story, but I wasn’t allowed to go back to sleep. I joined the search; retraced my steps; retold my story a dozen times. No one had seen him. The circus people weren’t interested. The Lion tamer turned out to be the owner and also a clown and all he wanted to do was sleep. I knew how he felt.
I like to imagine Harry travelling the world, high on a tightrope somewhere. His folks don’t talk to my folks these days. They don’t talk to me either. Luckily I’d walked with Ellie Foster on the way home because the Police interviewed me several times.
No one believed me when I said Harry wanted to join the circus. I learnt that you can’t ever really know someone and I often wonder, even today, if the lions were hungry the next day
- - -
I have always loved words: playing with them, rearranging them. saying them, writing them in different orders. I write poetry, short fiction, and screenscripts. I have had success in all these fields and am currently creating a novella paranormal romance, which is very challenging. My silver hair and fine lines attest to my life's experiences.
The Rose Bush
By Philip Dodd
She sits on the edge of the bed, her hands held in her lap, examining her fingers. Her thin nightdress is dirty from the soil, the grey silk spoiled. Her fingers are scratched and cut from the thorns. Mostly minor scratches, with a couple of more serious ones from the older, stiffer thorns that were as hard as steel. She tries to use her stiff sore hands to brush the dust and mud from her knees, and from her poor scuffed and grazed shins.
There are rose petals all around her, on the bed, the floor, and under her bare feet. There is a trail of red tears from the door to the bed. Twigs and leaves have snapped and parted from the rose bush, and snagged on the carpet and the bedding. She is very still now, not quite sure where the strength came from. She lowers her head so her chin is almost on her chest and stares at her hands as she slowly rubs and wipes them across each other.
The porch light had been on when she had gone outside and launched herself at the rose bush. She had dug her fingers into the soil. She had pulled and pushed, rocked and yanked the plant from the soil. The roots didn't want to come, she'd had to prise them out, like snapping strings from a violin, they held at first then gave way to a tangled mess. The porch light had blazed around her, a solitary spotlight on her frenzied excavation.
The rose was nearly twelve years old and a good size by now. She had half carried and half dragged it into the house. The thorns tore at the carpet and the branches had held fast against the doorframe until she found the strength to drag it through to the bedroom, knocking over a standard lamp and a small table on the way through.
The bed was unmade, and had been so for several days. The mattress was exposed and the bedclothes and pillows were twisted and wrecked. As she struggled with the rose bush silent tears mixed with the droplets of blood, and with rose petals, staining her hands and arms. She strained and lifted the rose bush, holding onto it by a central stem. A large thorn bit into her thumb and tore into the skin, as the bush swiped the ceiling light from its fitting. Then she smashed the rose bush heavily onto the bed, once, twice, and three times. She collapsed into the mess of red rose petals, and glossy green leaves. She caught sight of herself in the dressing table mirror and pushed herself up into a sitting position. She looked around her at these chaotic offerings to a broken love. Not flowers, but broken parts of flowers, the bed a funeral pyre.
As she rubs the soil between her fingers she remembers how they'd both patted the soil down with their hands after the young plant had gone into the hole. She limply sinks to the bed once more. Her head on the pillow next to the rose bush's mass of roots, just as she used to lie next to him. The smell of the soil is curiously masculine, she presses her face closer and draws in the fragrance of earth and rose, and closes her eyes.
- - -
Philip writes stories, some are fact, some are fiction. His stories can be funny, or they might be sad, and are often about memory and how we are shaped. He lives in the UK. Find him at www.domesticatedbohemian.blogspot.com and on Twitter as @PhilipDodd
By Philip Dodd
She sits on the edge of the bed, her hands held in her lap, examining her fingers. Her thin nightdress is dirty from the soil, the grey silk spoiled. Her fingers are scratched and cut from the thorns. Mostly minor scratches, with a couple of more serious ones from the older, stiffer thorns that were as hard as steel. She tries to use her stiff sore hands to brush the dust and mud from her knees, and from her poor scuffed and grazed shins.
There are rose petals all around her, on the bed, the floor, and under her bare feet. There is a trail of red tears from the door to the bed. Twigs and leaves have snapped and parted from the rose bush, and snagged on the carpet and the bedding. She is very still now, not quite sure where the strength came from. She lowers her head so her chin is almost on her chest and stares at her hands as she slowly rubs and wipes them across each other.
__________
The rose was nearly twelve years old and a good size by now. She had half carried and half dragged it into the house. The thorns tore at the carpet and the branches had held fast against the doorframe until she found the strength to drag it through to the bedroom, knocking over a standard lamp and a small table on the way through.
The bed was unmade, and had been so for several days. The mattress was exposed and the bedclothes and pillows were twisted and wrecked. As she struggled with the rose bush silent tears mixed with the droplets of blood, and with rose petals, staining her hands and arms. She strained and lifted the rose bush, holding onto it by a central stem. A large thorn bit into her thumb and tore into the skin, as the bush swiped the ceiling light from its fitting. Then she smashed the rose bush heavily onto the bed, once, twice, and three times. She collapsed into the mess of red rose petals, and glossy green leaves. She caught sight of herself in the dressing table mirror and pushed herself up into a sitting position. She looked around her at these chaotic offerings to a broken love. Not flowers, but broken parts of flowers, the bed a funeral pyre.
__________
As she rubs the soil between her fingers she remembers how they'd both patted the soil down with their hands after the young plant had gone into the hole. She limply sinks to the bed once more. Her head on the pillow next to the rose bush's mass of roots, just as she used to lie next to him. The smell of the soil is curiously masculine, she presses her face closer and draws in the fragrance of earth and rose, and closes her eyes.
- - -
Philip writes stories, some are fact, some are fiction. His stories can be funny, or they might be sad, and are often about memory and how we are shaped. He lives in the UK. Find him at www.domesticatedbohemian.blogspot.com and on Twitter as @PhilipDodd
Without a Utility Belt
By Gayle Francis Moffet
She calls me from France, voice lilting and happy. “You should come out. It’s amazing. I ate the most interesting pizza.”
“I can’t possibly,” I reply. “I don’t even have a passport.”
I am in France.
I am a superhero
cape fluttering behind me
There is a bluff in my eye line. Huge and smooth. Ocean waves slam to the top of it and recede.
There is a tree
roots half-exposed
it grew there before the bluff was a bluff
before it was forced to be indecent with its roots
A scream: shrill and terrified. More screams as I whip around. My cape moves with me. There are people, and they are in danger. I have to get them across the ocean waves to the bluff, to the indecent tree.
…how?
A dozen of me, all superheroes, created by the ocean waves, curling out of the water as the waves bully the bluff, as they mock the indecent tree.
“We’re you’re stunt doubles.” I smile. Of course they are.
They jump
they throw ropes
they land in the water, ride the waves back in
like porpoises
or superheroes
Porpoise superheroes
I am a superhero.
I am in France.
I can smell pizza.
It strikes me—in a moment of quiet, as my doubles try another angle—that I should not be in France. I don’t even have a passport.
But the pizza here is good, she said.
I like pizza.
I am across the ocean waves, pulling a rope around the indecent tree.
I am next to the scared people, rigging the into a zip line. I am across the ocean waves, detaching people from the zip line.
There are no more stunt doubles
just me.
I am a superhero.
The indecent tree holds everyone’s weight. I smile when everyone is across. I walk the edge of the bluff. I slip.
The waves are warm
I ride the waves to shore
I am in a car.
on the phone
the road ahead is curvy, the lights of other cars a haze
“I got the pizza,” I say. The pizza box is in my hands. It is huge, half the size of the car. “It’s amazing.”
“I told you,” she says.
The car veers. The pizza box is gone. I got off the road.
I was supposed to be driving.
I wake up in a hole. No, not a hole, a well. The sides are made of rock. There is a man there. He is tall, thin, and muscular.
A Greyhound of a man
muscle barely covering bone
skin barely covering muscle
The nose is wrong
a pug nose on a Greyhound face
a Mutt of a man, trust on his face
“We have to climb up,” he says. “We have to escape.”
I clutch a rock
it fits into my palm
it breaks into my palm.
There is a shower of dust, then a shower of rocks. We duck together, the man and I. The rocks do not hit us. They fall around us. They make a cave.
At the top of the cave, there is light.
He lies on the ground. I lie next to him, press my cheek against his chest.
“We will escape,” he says.
I know we will.
I am a superhero.
There is pizza.
- - -
Gayle Francis Moffet writes essays, short stories, plays, novels, and poetry. She is currently writing her second novel, which she thinks was supposed to be her first novel. Recently, she and her husband moved to Portland, Oregon, which is a whole new experience from Yellville, Arkansas (where she grew up) and Springfield, Missouri (where she went to college). When she's not writing new pieces or working on her Master's Degree in Professional/Technical Writing, she's blogging about writing at gaylefmoffet.com.
By Gayle Francis Moffet
She calls me from France, voice lilting and happy. “You should come out. It’s amazing. I ate the most interesting pizza.”
“I can’t possibly,” I reply. “I don’t even have a passport.”
I am in France.
I am a superhero
cape fluttering behind me
There is a bluff in my eye line. Huge and smooth. Ocean waves slam to the top of it and recede.
There is a tree
roots half-exposed
it grew there before the bluff was a bluff
before it was forced to be indecent with its roots
A scream: shrill and terrified. More screams as I whip around. My cape moves with me. There are people, and they are in danger. I have to get them across the ocean waves to the bluff, to the indecent tree.
…how?
A dozen of me, all superheroes, created by the ocean waves, curling out of the water as the waves bully the bluff, as they mock the indecent tree.
“We’re you’re stunt doubles.” I smile. Of course they are.
They jump
they throw ropes
they land in the water, ride the waves back in
like porpoises
or superheroes
Porpoise superheroes
I am a superhero.
I am in France.
I can smell pizza.
It strikes me—in a moment of quiet, as my doubles try another angle—that I should not be in France. I don’t even have a passport.
But the pizza here is good, she said.
I like pizza.
I am across the ocean waves, pulling a rope around the indecent tree.
I am next to the scared people, rigging the into a zip line. I am across the ocean waves, detaching people from the zip line.
There are no more stunt doubles
just me.
I am a superhero.
The indecent tree holds everyone’s weight. I smile when everyone is across. I walk the edge of the bluff. I slip.
The waves are warm
I ride the waves to shore
I am in a car.
on the phone
the road ahead is curvy, the lights of other cars a haze
“I got the pizza,” I say. The pizza box is in my hands. It is huge, half the size of the car. “It’s amazing.”
“I told you,” she says.
The car veers. The pizza box is gone. I got off the road.
I was supposed to be driving.
I wake up in a hole. No, not a hole, a well. The sides are made of rock. There is a man there. He is tall, thin, and muscular.
A Greyhound of a man
muscle barely covering bone
skin barely covering muscle
The nose is wrong
a pug nose on a Greyhound face
a Mutt of a man, trust on his face
“We have to climb up,” he says. “We have to escape.”
I clutch a rock
it fits into my palm
it breaks into my palm.
There is a shower of dust, then a shower of rocks. We duck together, the man and I. The rocks do not hit us. They fall around us. They make a cave.
At the top of the cave, there is light.
He lies on the ground. I lie next to him, press my cheek against his chest.
“We will escape,” he says.
I know we will.
I am a superhero.
There is pizza.
- - -
Gayle Francis Moffet writes essays, short stories, plays, novels, and poetry. She is currently writing her second novel, which she thinks was supposed to be her first novel. Recently, she and her husband moved to Portland, Oregon, which is a whole new experience from Yellville, Arkansas (where she grew up) and Springfield, Missouri (where she went to college). When she's not writing new pieces or working on her Master's Degree in Professional/Technical Writing, she's blogging about writing at gaylefmoffet.com.
