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Spines, Not Slime"Kiss it,” Lisa barked. “Will it hurt?” I asked. “Don't think about it.” “I won't do it if it hurts.” “Do you want your wish to come true or not?” My older sister Lisa had spent the summer making a small fortune by profiting off of the gullibility of little girls like me.Ever since she snatched up a hedgehog from a mossy stump that day in late June, she passed the hours chasing after customers. Lisa's sales pitch was simple: If you kiss the hedgehog, your biggest wish would come true. So far half of the little girls in Charlottesville had paid her a quarter for the privilege of being tricked. Why she hadn't tried convincing the girls to kiss a frog instead was probably a matter of convenience. She hadn't found a frog. Finally, I mustered all my courage to close my eyes and press my lips to the shaking creature's back. The hedgehog sneezed. When I opened my eyes and saw that my wish had not manifested itself, I demanded a refund on the pittance that at the time seemed like a great sum. “You didn't make your wish clear enough in your mind,” Lisa huffed. “How did you expect the hedgehog to see it?” Before I could answer, Lisa whisked the hedgehog away and raced off to her next victim. I, meanwhile, remained sitting in our tomato garden, penniless and ponyless. Thanks to Sandra Carmargo for lending us her hedgehog, Tarantino. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Living on a Thin LineBy J.T. Stockton QuailBellMagazine.com Leon is dead. *** I don’t feel any blame. Sure, there are times I wish things went differently. Was the visit at 3 am the wisest of decisions? Maybe not, but I’m damn glad I did, or else I wouldn’t have the strength to carry on for guilt, sorrow, and regret would consume me. Someone left a fucking cigarette on his grave. What an immature act that is. Was it an act of defamation of character and last resting place, or some inane way of showing respect? Yeah, the man enjoyed a smoke, but, God damn people, come on. I’ll make sure to leave matches, ashes, and phlegm on your grave, you worthless disrespectful swine. The fucking duck is staring at me again. I would think ducks to be a relatively unthreatening species but under the guise of a burning mind, it’s the scariest damn thing standing motionless in the still hour of a summer night. Fuck this drug, I shouldn’t have taken it alone my first time. I miss you, Leon. Leon? I thought you were dead, I saw your grave. How are you standing before me? Virgil waits for no man anymore. Back you go, away from here. Your time is over. I’m sure Paradise is waiting eagerly for your arrival—Milton described it so. The poet’s quest is not for you. Go on now, Leon. Allow me to continue, please wait, I will think about you, I will not forget. Go on now, Leon, your time has come. In the still of night, the midnight air passes me by. Even half a mile down the road I can hear my alarm clock. MY alarm clock, I swear it. The penetrating, annoying sound rang through my ears, it must be stopped. Running, the only means of transportation, pray I left my door unlocked. Yank that son of a bitch out the wall, stop that mechanical crying. Cradle the clock, fall into a deep sleep. Dream of origami shaped trees, dream of an elephant wearing Jiminy Cricket as a hat…dream of Leon. *** The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Apple of My EyeI waited among the Wall Street yuppies by the low tracks of Summit Station, rubbing my elbows in my threadbare sweater. I scanned the crowd once over to be sure there wasn’t one who could say: “You’re Chuck Mathers’s girl, aren’t you?” Thank God, the ones who would know my old man are all bankers and brokers old enough to drive to work. Yep, just yuppies here. A small crowd was gathered across the tracks, waiting on a westbound train, the small town workers. There was a frumpy woman in a sweater: a family friend, perhaps? No. And a man in a coat, who looked an awful lot like my dentist, but he wasn’t. There was no one I knew: no one to witness this getaway and no one to make legends of it. Good.
I glanced up at the clock hanging from the station’s wall for what must have been the ninth time. 8:51, no train in sight. No Luke either. I had the feeling that I was being stood up. Maybe I should call…No. Calling is for the desperate, Clare told me. It’s for the bottom-feeders, and you and I are way too hot to stoop to that level. Clare was my best—and perhaps only—friend. We found that we clicked sophomore year in fourth period Spanish where we took turns sipping Grey Goose from a Fuji bottle shared between us. Clare swore that with each flaming sip, her mediocre Spanish took on an air of fluency and I believed it. However, Señora Ramirez did not. Clare was childish about the whole thing and one slap on the wrist turned out to be a slap that hurled her half way across the state to a different school that would supposedly turn her into a lady. I didn’t have that problem. And somewhere along the way, she and I forgot to keep in touch, though her number still buzzed in the back of my mind and my fingers were still tempted to dial it. But I couldn’t call then. Not Clare, nor Luke. From the depths of my sweater pocket, my phone was buzzing angrily, probably Headmistress Rosen and probably best unchecked. Rosen had taken to calling me after eventually finding that both my parents are virtually impossible to reach: my father in his city corner office, guarded by a short-skirted secretary and my mother off throwing herself into the world of fashion, shopping the day away with her latest accessory, Chloe, her puffy Pomeranian. Old Saint John’s has gotten pretty good at figuring out when I’m not where I’m supposed to be. It isn’t even second period. My eyes darted back to the station’s clock. 8:53. Where the hell is Luke? Around the time I lost touch with Clare, Luke fell into my life. Luke was a senior at Everett Academy, who drove a flashy, little, black Mustang. A balmy July day, he winked at me from the lifeguard chair at the Fairmount Country Club pool and I decided he’d be mine. We started splitting bags of Skittles and lukewarm cans of Coke and fooled around on the mossy grass of the putting green. And once, just one time, I talked him into buying me dinner—a skill that required a short skirt and a bit charm. But Luke rose to the occasion and donned his coat and tie. He whirled me off to some nifty seafood place downtown with a dress code and white tablecloths where he fed me buttered lobster— something I had never dared try before—off a tiny trident fork. We slurped up oysters in shells and loitered late into the night until I became his. That night, I felt like a lady. Since then, six months had gone by: six months of video games and cruising around Central Jersey in his Mustang, honking at girls out to jog. But today was the exception, today, I was a lady and today we’d see the city. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Magic Beneath the SurfaceEsperanza "My name is Christa Dickson. I am a 21 year old conceptual and underwater portrait photographer from Cincinnati, Ohio. My passion is being able to make my dreams a reality. I believe art is made for everybody, and I believe there is magic within a camera. I see the world through the lens and when I look through it I see magic. I see mermaids, evil queens, witches and wizards. I see the world I'd much prefer to live in. I believe we can bring about this magic into our everyday lives and that's what I choose to do within my photography. I want people to see beauty and abnormality in everything around them. Just because something is what we are used to doesn't make it the only way to live." - Christa Dickson Fade and Evade The Queen Promise Me The Dawn
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Lila and the BoxBy Tim Steele QuailBellMagazine.com The box arrived two months after Lila’s roommate Veronica had moved out. It had no distinguishing features. It was brown and square and medium in size, with VERONICA written on it in small black letters. Like all boxes, its inside would attract more interest than its outside. Lila wondered what it would be like if people were more like boxes in this way, then decided that the idea sounded like a bad hallmark commercial written by a bitter woman who churned out such sentiment with utter apathy while chewing day-old gum. Lila put the box down and called Veronica. While the phone rang on the other end, she imagined that Veronica had been sent an actual person, and that this person was sitting scrunched up in the box, listening as best they could to the world outside. She wondered what the call would sound like. Maybe it would sound like a cartoon. “Hi, a box came for you.” “Pshebebuh?” “It doesn’t say.” “Pshebebuhbobuh?” “I don’t know, there isn’t any name or address on it.” “Pshebebuh….pshemumuhmamuhbuguhjubemubabobuhumobebuhum.” “Okay, are you sure?” “Psshbe.” Lila set the phone down and took the box cutter out from the drawer. She had only opened someone else’s mail once before, 16 years ago, at the age of 8, when her father had gotten a letter from his first wife. The contents were all very unfriendly. He had taken the letter from her and told her in a calm and patient tone that what she had done was a very serious offense, and that something terrible would happen if she ever did it again. She had studied the features of his face, his narrow and protruding beak-like nose, his sterile grey eyes that never became too big or too squinched behind the thin silver frames of his glasses, his curly hair that reached backwards as if trying to break free from his scalp. She had decided right then; the terrible thing that would happen must certainly be death. But as Lila moved the blade along the edges of Veronica’s box, no feeling of impending doom came upon her. When the cutting was done she set the blade down and looked at the newly vulnerable box resting on the counter below. She picked up the phone again. “You’re definitely sure?” “Yes! Jesus, Lila, it’s not a big deal.” “Okay.” She lifted the cardboard flaps of the box that protected whatever lay inside, ready to be seen and discovered and loved. Her eyebrows narrowed. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Intelligent DesignBy Sarah Sullivan QuailBellMagazine.com God is a retarded child juggling planets and asteroids with chubby fingers, swirling clouds together like finger paint over the vast blue playground ball of the earth and pushing this ball in a tight tether around the sun. His clumsy hands shake as he speeds up time, slows it down, speeds it up again– volcanoes erupt, wildfires rage, lava rolls across hot plains and melts into sticky wax like crayons on a radiator. The fossils of trilobites shatter into dust as he grinds the tectonic plates together in frustration. Gradually his anger subsides, and the earth cools like a child recovering from a fever as he lays down to nap in a cotton blanket of clouds. Below him the rain gently stills the hot ground while he settles into fretful sleep. At night he cries in his celestial crib beneath the cold stars and the soundless moon. Sarah Sullivan is a graduate nursing student at the University of Virginia. |