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The BoxBy Peter McMillan QuailBellMagazine.com Nathalie walked in with a box. Said it was for me. Didn't say who it was from, just that it was left for me. I asked her to open it since my arthritis was acting up real bad and I was liable to drop it and break or scatter whatever was inside. She said she'd have to do it later, 'cause she had to go look after Miss Emily down the hall. Miss Emily had fallen again. Nathalie put the box on my bedside table, within sight but just out of reach in case I tried to get it and pushed it over by accident. It was a pretty good size box. Not a moving box or anything close to that size. More like a hat box, for women's hats. I never wore a hat, but my late wife, Lizzie, did. A hat box. Square. Two of them that size would have been a perfect cube. Seemed kinda old to me. Not that it was scratched or damaged in any way. It just looked old, like it couldn't be from today's stores. But then I'm not exactly up-to-date anymore. Something to think about...this box. I had to figure who could have sent it and what was inside it. Couldn't imagine. Hadn't seen or talked to any friends or family in I don't know how long. Course, most of our friends were on the West Coast and both Lizzie and me were only children and our two boys died young. Their wives remarried and we lost touch. What could be in there? Didn't look heavy when Nathalie moved it. Didn't rattle around either. Maybe a blanket, an afghan, or whatever they call them, donated by some organization or other in town. That would be nice. Thoughtful. It does get pretty chilly in here some nights and that would feel good on my legs. Nathalie was back. She started to take my vitals, and I shook my head with as much force as I could muster and said I had to know what was in the box. She asked if I'd been worrying about that all this time. I nodded. She moved the box close to my bedside and took off the lid. Inside was was a framed photograph of me and Lizzie—must have been in our twenties—and another of me and Lizzie and the boys at the Grand Canyon. There was a commencement program for our oldest who graduated first in his class in college. There were letters from our youngest from when he was overseas. His boyhood stamp collection was neatly tucked away. A copy of our first mortgage was in there, partly burned because we changed our minds and decided to stamp it "Paid in Full" and keep it as a souvenir. The dog tags from Tag, Sparky, Pal, and Roxie were carefully wrapped in a kerchief that Roxie used to wear on special occasions. Christmas cards from our closest friends and our grownup boys were carefully bundled. The pocket watch from her grandfather—on her mother's side—that got returned…twice. I stopped her. "Nathalie, take it away! Please! It's too much. Please take it away." She did. That evening I begged her for an extra pain killer or sedative or something...just for one night, I said. The next day I realized that Lizzie had sent the box, sort of. She had kept a box of memorabilia like that in our attic. I never looked in it. After Lizzie passed, I never thought about the box again, so it must have been sitting there until the new owners came across it and pieced together who it belonged to. That was real thoughtful of them. The author is a freelance writer and ESL instructor who lives on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario with his wife and two flat-coated retrievers. He has published two anthologies of his reprinted stories: Flash! Fiction and Flash! Fiction 2. #FlashFiction #Fiction #CreativeWriting #TheBox #Keepsakes #Memories
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Profile#Illustration #Artist #VictoriaBorges #Profile #Portrait
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The Lonely Star Pony Finds Friends in DreamsBy Paisley Hibou QuailBellMagazine.com #Friendship #Ponies #Horses #Dreams #Photography
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Robo GirlI ain't for sale, she stuttered, Don't make me be worth anything. The client sitting on the green wicker chair consoled her, Nobody is going to pay for you, Nobody is trying to pay for you, I'm reacting. It's natural. How deep is your love? Considering myself an old woman until 22 is like considering a church and a sanctuary to be the same. I am young! And I am young! And I am young! Didn't know I was actually looking at the world through eyes of my own all this time. I was the one that felt like a spectacle. It's too impersonal anymore, the client in the green wicker chair assured her. #Poetry #RoboGirl #Illustration #Robot #Youth #Aging
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StretchedProducers: Sidney Shuman, Shannon Minor, Amy Gatewood and Lindsey Story Photographer: Jasmine Thompson Model: Nikolai McKenzie QuailBellMagazine.com #Photography #Model #MaleBody
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The Tree FortBy William Holby QuailBellMagazine.com Ian Muldoon was an old man, as old as men can get after losing those they love. Throughout the neighborhood it was well known that you should steer clear of the old man’s house. Not because he would ever actually do something, but because of how scary and decrepit his wrinkled face was. His home was dingy and without oxygen. The furniture was smoke ridden and covered in sheeted plastic. Above the door was an M1 Carbine with sights that were rusted and scraped beyond repair. Korea had chewed Ian up and spat him back out. The hole that ‘some gook’ blasted through his right leg still ached. All that was so long ago now, more than a half century. It felt like just yesterday that Mrs. Muldoon was here, making Shepard’s pie for the kids. Kids he hadn’t seen in years. Ian spent most of his time looking out the window at the forest behind his house. One time a bunch of the neighborhood kids snuck into his backyard by way of the swampy undergrowth that camouflaged the ground from the windows of his house. He had watched them as they took up flanking positions behind the trees and stood in awe and fear of their dare. They snickered in their hidden positions until Ian chased them off his property like any crotchety old man would. That was more than two decades ago now. Those kids were probably grown up and married. The memory of that old man chasing them away was probably forgotten in the fog of childhood. There Ian stood, day after day, staring out the window at the forest as the seasons changed. He had long since stopped watching television; it made him sick to see the world as it was. He didn’t know quite why, every time he thought he had a handle on what exactly it was, it would slip away again. And so Ian resigned himself to staring out that window. Sometimes, as he stared, he would think about her. Not Mrs. Muldoon, but another woman, a girl he had known growing up, before Korea. Ian often wondered where she was, or whether she was even still alive. He liked to imagine what her life must have been like. Did she marry? Have kids? Ian had no way of finding out. He knew he would never see her again. One snowy windswept December day, Ian was staring out his window. He was just sitting there, his eyes permanently locked on the frozen trees. He might as well have been looking at a painting, for it never seemed to change. The same great oak stood, the birds nest in one of its branches temporarily dormant. Spring, that was Ian’s favorite season, a season in which he could watch things move. Ian was sitting in his usual spot, when he saw something amidst the canopy of the trees, something different about the forest. The sight was so shocking that it caused a jolt to go threw him. There in the woods, roughly thirty feet in the air sat a giant tree fort. It was a tree fort of tree forts, so large you could fit a dozen people in it. A moldy rope ladder was strung from the trap door of the fort half way down the tree trunk it rested in. The frayed ends of the ladder were pointed toward the ground, an angel’s hair left to droop. That ladder has to be decades old, Ian thought as he stood up. How did I not see it before? As Ian stared at the fort something changed within him. He felt excitement and exhilaration for the first time in a long time. He had to solve this mystery. Ian’s cane clattered against the hard wood floor, as if he had never needed it. His hand fumbled for a moment as he took the oxygen line away from his nose. The damage left from a lifetime of smoking seemed undone. Ian turned on his heel, his right heel, and headed for the closet at the front of the house, his war wound hurting less than usual. In just two minutes Ian had a coat on and was out the back door. As he made his way through the two-foot thick snow on the back porch he could still see the fort, just where it had been, he was not hallucinating. He wasted no time, setting out immediately into the forest, trudging through the snow with strength he had not known since the war. As Ian entered the woods he felt the weight of something in his coat pocket. A hammer and box of nails he had left in the coat years ago when he had gone out to fix the paneling on the front of the house. He pulled the hammer and nails out and examined them while he walked. The cold of that December evening seemed to dissipate as he drew closer and closer to the tree fort. Ian noted to himself that the air was warmer here in the woods, the snow suddenly less deep and easier to move through. Before Ian knew it he was sweating in his hefty coat and his boots were making crunching noises. He looked down to see that he was no longer walking on snow. He shrugged the coat off with ease and continued forward at a faster rate. His legs were now striding farther, and his arms were swinging of their own accord. The air was no longer sharp with winter cold and now smelled of pollen and had the glare of honey. A little boy no older than ten reached the base of the tree upon which the fort had been situated. The boy was clasping his hammer and nails, ready to help whomever it was constructing the thing. But to the boy’s astonishment there was nothing in the branches above, and no older boy with some master plan. The tree fort had yet to be built. William Holby lives in Boulder, Colorado. #Fiction #ShortStory #TheTreeFort #Treehouse #Aging #Youth #Childhood
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HelicopterBy Kit Zauhar QuailBellMagazine.com #Film #College #NYU #Helicopter #NewYork #Loneliness #Connections
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Night SensationsBy Starling Root QuailBellMagazine.com “The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known.” -Viktor Shklovsky, 'Art as Technique,' 1917 #Photography #Night #Sensations
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Strangers Joe Marchia is a writer and artist. His poems, stories, and articles have been featured in numerous publications. #Film #Experimental #MovingImage The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
In Which Lynyrd Confronts Larger Issues Brought Up by the Need to Eat Something for Supper Is it so hard for other people to pick out what they're gonna eat? Food shouldn't be so hard. nutrition is subject to advertising The guilt is balanced by indulgence bought with funds I should be saving How do I stop my mental crisis when it is time to eat something All this internal conflict and I wonder how bad others get this shit. #Haiku #Poetry #FoodPolitics |