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Night SmilesBy Brenda Anderson QuailBellMagazine.com Cece saw her neighbor coming and flinched. Every time they met on the pavement, Batty Lady would throw out the same bright greeting, “May your night be full of smiles.” As their paths crossed, her old lady eyes were already looking past Cece, focused on something else. Perhaps she repeated the same mantra to cats or garden flowers. Night-smiles, everyone! Cece could have throttled her. Forget smiles. Since Tristan’s death, she’d clung to memories. Photos stared back at her. Objects gathered dust. The smell of her husband’s clothes had long since vanished. Her eyes prickled and she turned to go home. Well, not home. An empty apartment. Tristan’s towel still lay draped over the sofa. They’d given him a beach farewell. Many had brought flowers. Slim and tanned, wearing light, transparent cotton, the women had stood silent, the men beside them uncharacteristically silent. A brother, a sister (whose, she couldn’t even remember now) said something inane. Cece had opened the urn containing Tristan’s ashes, walked into the receding wave and emptied the urn into the sea. The sand had felt gritty against the soles of her feet. Now, months later, she wished she could have done more. Dammit, she sold paintings. Art had been her life. Why hadn’t she made something to cast into the waters? Some artist she’d turned out to be! Those pathetic floral tributes. Even their friends had had more imagination. One or two had brought long stemmed roses, and frangipani. Yes, she remembered cream, pink, even orange frangipani petals. The cool, exotic perfume always conjured up idyllic beaches, blue skies and white sand. Not death. Not ashes. Cece’s throat constricted. The world’s bereaved had always cast their wreaths into the sea. Taken altogether, piled one on top of the other, they’d make a knockout floral tribute. She grimaced. Like the sea knew, or cared. She jumped up and strode outside. To her right, brilliant red bougainvillea spilled over Batty Lady’s fence. With a vicious twist she broke off a few spikes and walked down to the sea. The setting sun painted the water all shades of orange and blue, and an evening breeze ruffled the waves. Cece strode into the water. Frothy wavelets broke round her ankles as she flung the bougainvillea into the sea. The beautiful, calm, pitiless sea didn’t know or care. She turned to go. An overpowering perfume enveloped her. Cece swung round. A mountain of plaited roses, carnations, lilies and magnolias floated on the calm waters, their reflection shivering in the fading light. Every flower ever cast into the sea. All the wreaths the world had ever seen. She blinked, and they were gone. Only her bougainvillea rode the waters. Cece burst into tears. The sea hadn’t forgotten, after all. A breeze ruffled her hair as she took the long way home. Stepping inside the apartment, Cece gave a tentative smile. Brenda Anderson's fiction has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways, A cappella Zoo, and Punchnel’s. She lives in Adelaide, South Australia with her husband and two children.
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TuesdayBy Danielle Bordelon QuailBellMagazine.com Harold hears the wreck before he sees it. He gasps as he takes in the scene. The two cars are totaled. He is the only other car on the road. He flings the car door open with such force his arm teeters out of its socket. He runs. The panic takes him back to over a year ago. It was a Tuesday. The air was beginning to turn cold. The leaves were starting to fall. The road was slick with moisture. She had left in the middle of the night to clear her head. She had said she wasn’t happy anymore, that she felt trapped. She had said she couldn’t take the way he looked at her, like he thought she was something special. She had said she just didn’t know. He got the call early that morning. The kids were still in bed. The other driver had been drunk, they said, had probably never even realized he was driving in the wrong lane. It was dark, they said, she probably hadn’t even seen him coming. It was quick, they said, she probably hadn’t even felt any pain. Drunk. Dark. Quick. Harold thinks of her as he sprints to the two cars, hoping without hope that perhaps he can save someone this time. He stops. The kids didn’t believe him at first. They’d cried when it set in that she was really gone. She hadn’t been all that great of a mother; she’d spent most of the last few months in her room, but she was theirs. Harold cried too. Quietly, when they weren’t looking. She hadn’t been all that great of a wife; she’d spent most of the last few months in her room, but she was his. Now he sees the bright red convertible she had insisted on having in flames. He knows, though he cannot see it, that there is a pine air freshener dangling from the broken mirror. The other car, a faded blue pickup truck, burns quietly. Inside, someone moans; there is a broken beer bottle near the smashed window. He runs faster, hoping without hope. He sees a flash of blonde hair tangled in the wreckage and knows. He runs to her, not feeling as the flames singe and burn his skin and the hot metal brands him. Her body is mangled, but her chest still rises and falls. She looks up at him. “You…came back.” Harold does not think what he should, that this is impossible, that his wife is dead and the dead do not come back to life. Instead, he smiles. “I did.” He doesn’t remember how or why he is here this late at night. But he remembers the past year with clarity. The denial. The pain. The grief. It is a Tuesday. The air is just beginning to turn cold. The leaves are just starting to fall. The road is slick with moisture. And somewhere, deep in the folds of time, they receive a second chance. Danielle Bordelon currently studies International Studies and Spanish at Southern Methodist University. She lives in an apartment with three friends, hundreds of abused books, and an overactive imagination. Danielle has dreams of being an author, along with other strange dreams like dancing avocados. Her short story “After” has recently been accepted for publication in Black Fox Literary Magazine for the Summer 2013 issue. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Schwester IInspired by an image of our favorite pair of sisters, CocoRosie.
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Les PoumonsBy Dana Carlson QuailBellMagazine.com A quivering light Animates her night and A petite lantern’s glow Flirts like a halo on Cherry lips and chalk Like skin from the slender stalk. She invites the vessel with ins-and-outs Of the damp portal that pouts while A flick of her tongue, a mild choke Releases tangled ribbons of smoke as Partners they revolve In Danse Macabre they dissolve. A baton of ash, A toxic cache, A glimmering tip, A throaty drip, That is silenced with a third glass of wine. Dana Carlson is a student majoring in English and Journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University.
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A Cabin with No FireplaceBy Guy J. Jackson QuailBellMagazine.com Elton lived in a cabin with no fireplace. He still knew heat from the bars of his space heater and the scratchy blankets on his bed, and he still knew comfort from the overlarge sweaters he wore, but he just wasn’t so sure that any feelings of warmth came out truthfully from his heart. In the woods surrounding the cabin lived the Pokatee. At night, Elton carved quacking ducks from bars of soap while he squinted out at the Pokatee’s blue-tinged campfires. During the day, when Elton glimpsed the Pokatee, they were slinking in among the trees in their costumes of wood and plaster and the amber lights of their eyes were all that showed of their faces and all that showed of the rest of the Pokatee was their enormous hands with just three fingers that looked coated in spider fur and flickered like snakes. It made Elton somewhat uncomfortable to be the only human living in the midst of what was obviously the part of the forest belonging to the Pokatee. Elton never liked to think he even had any core of emotion, but sometimes broken ptarmigan would crash land in the woods surrounding the cabin and Elton would have to rescue the ptarmigan from the hunger of the Pokatee. As long as Elton walked out from his cold cabin with a fist-sized stone that he tossed in the air and caught one-handed the Pokatee would leave him alone. Elton would walk out and scoop up whatever stunned ptarmigan while the Pokatee, hidden behind nearby trees, made a ruckus sharpening their dinner knives. But then the ptarmigan always half-flew, half-hopped away to unknown fates just a few nights from Elton taking them in, and Elton knew it was because the ptarmigan could eat seeds from the false-pewter bowl of seeds Elton put out for them and the ptarmigan could preen their feathers on the hewn legs of Elton’s one-and-only table but they could never ever warm their ruffs by sitting near the blank cabin wall. “A good load of bricks,” said Elton, as he sat in the evenings and carved soap ducks and kept an eye on the Pokatee and mused on what he figured was the first step in getting the ptarmigan to stay. Guy J. Jackson is a writer living in Bend, Oregon.
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