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Monthly Archives: August 2005

Jasmine

Marietta’s fingers are perfectly tubular, less like hands than a child’s drawing of hands. Her eyes are large and dark as a guinea pig’s.

Jasmine’s two hundred twelve days pregnant and the only one here who knows CPR, dammit. Don’t they make you learn when you buy a pool? There should be a law. Jasmine had to pee a minute ago. She counts compressions, blows angry hair out of her face.

Marietta isn’t her kid. Marietta deserves better parents. Her mother’s bubbling to 911 while Jasmine pinches Marietta’s nostrils, although you’re not really supposed to, anymore. She realizes she’s wet herself.

Nina

“Because you can’t eat popcorn with a spoon, and it’s uncivilized to eat frosting with your fingers,” says Nina.

“Ah,” says Jax. “So the fridge and oven are open and on because…?”

“The heat went out this morning.” Nina wriggles down into the blankets. “Refrigeration is exothermic, you know.”

“How do you make everything seem so reasonable?” Jax finally shuts the door and shrugs off his bag.

“Get over here,” says Nina, victorious. She dips out a ladleful of Orville Redenbacher Original Butter and rolls it in Betty Crocker Vanilla Sprinkles. “I’ll make it reasonable that we’re watching Teen Wolf Too.

Cynthia

“CYNTHIA!” screams Ban from around the corner, and Cynthia sprints.

Etheldred’s hauling Ban and a rope into a third-story window when she turns the corner. He grins and waves, then disappears.

Cynthia saw the padlocks on the first-floor doors. She scrambles through her backpack; maybe a hook and line, a bobby pin–

There. A deck of cards. She flexes it and begins to flip them out, and while they’re still in the air she’s running up their backs toward that window. Higher, spiraling, don’t think about it: the deck is missing a joker, she remembers. Only fifty-three steps.

Taggert

“SPELLBINDING… A POTENT TRANSCENDENTAL-NOIR BREW!”

Kirkus Reviews

Leo Taggert’s laser eyes are trained on suburban Bangladesh in My Ganges Heart. Like the previous “TAGGERT’S PROSE IS TAUT AND LUMINOUS!”

Seattle Post Intelligencer

Heh. Give me a minute.

“SECOND PLACE MUST SUCK!”

Kirkus Reviews

“SHUT UP, CIRCULATION ZERO!”

Seattle Post Intelligencer

Ladies! Calm down, I’m sure we can arrange “A POSTMODERN CLASSIC!”

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Cleveland! I said not to call me here!

“I KNOW YOU MISSED ME!”

Cleveland Plain Dealer

“BITCH, YOU DID NOT!”

Kirkus Reviews

Oh shit. Oh Jesus.

“I’MA SLAP THAT OFF YOUR FRONT PAGE!”

Seattle Post Intelligencer

Paula

“Are you blind!” shouts Pat. “That was a stop sign!”

Cuthbert nods. “Mustard! My shorts are off.”

“What he means is he’s a polysemist,” sighs Paula. Paula is wearing two seatbelts. “Sorry, he was the only ride I could get.”

“So what, he’s from Utah?” Pat squints at her. “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.”

“Mormons aren’t polygamists or–” Paula hesitates. “Actually, you could make that argument.”

“Oh,” says Pat, “semi.”

“Yes! Polysemy! You’re getting it.”

“No,” says Pat, “there,” and points to the truck in their lane.

“Comma dash dash comma dash,” argues Cuthbert, signals left, and pulls onto the sidewalk.

Ian

Ian throws the plastic ball, and his brother swings and clips it with the red bat. The ball doesn’t go very far.

“That wasn’t a good throw,” declares his brother. “So it’s called a ball.” He kicks it toward the middle of the yard.

“How many of those do you get?”

“Four,” says his brother, hesitantly. “Then… I get a ghost runner on first. The other ones go to third and fourth.”

Ian’s positive there wasn’t a fourth base when they started, but he got out for missing it last time. He picks up the white ball out of the dirt.

Mishaal

But Sun hated the light.

“She said ‘Earth hurts my eyes!'” Mishaal hunches his shoulders, and his firelight shadow becomes round and menacing. “‘I will eat its light.'”

She rose up and began to swallow it, but Earth only made more.

“Sun shrank in pain,” hisses Mishaal. “The bright light crushed her to a tiny ball!”

At last, Sun cut a hole in herself to let the light out; she could keep eating forever, then, even as she swelled and fell.

“Earth saves its light by night,” says Mishaal, “and Sun heals, and the stars are her blood on the sky.”

Shelly

Shelly decides it’s September.

“Nobody said it could be September,” says Wedgwood, when he blows in the door. His eyes are wide. “You didn’t check to see if it could be September.”

“I hate August,” says Shelly.

Wedgwood hesitates. “Because August was when we–”

“Because it’s hot,” she says.

“It’s all slipping now,” he says, “you made it too heavy at this end.”

“So merry early Christmas,” says Shelly, “go away.”

“You’re careless,” he says as October tumbles into Labor Day.

“You’re too critical,” she says.

“I know.” He breezes out the window.

Shelly hits winter hard, and cracks her lips.

Raina

Raina slaps the support beam. “Not too much structuralll d d damage,” she says, and her voice goes flat and buzzy.

“You’re stuttering,” sighs Lehi.

“Oh. Rrreally?” Raina leaves blocky hand-shapes in the air as she paws open a command line. “PS. Uhmmm. K-kill minnnus nine two nn nine two eight eightttt.”

“You got it,” says Lehi, as her edges sharpen up. “What are you running on that poor subjective, anyway?”

Raina turns a little pink and shrugs. She’ll have to optimize the RabbitsFoot, change the sequential scan to binary or something, but she’s not telling him about that.

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