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Monthly Archives: March 2006

Leto

“When did you stop playing to win?” asks Iblis, pouring glass beads into the pattern that spells Hunger.

“I never started.” Leto’s amused, and moves her tokens one by one into the simple line called Love. “How do you keep score?”

Iblis steals Leto’s lead token to make the Sword. “Subjectively. The most aesthetically pleasing progression.”

“We’re unfit to judge that.” Slide and clack: Leto builds Ovens.

“Better bad judges than no judges.” Dirt, then Iblis pays for a reset to Hunger. “What’s a game without victory?”

Leto just sweeps the board clean with one arm.

Which is called Love Again.

Friday, March 3, 2006
A story yet Uncategorized

Amber

“You’re a mud pie.” Amber tops his head with grass.

“I’m the king of the forest,” Doug says gravely. “Except grass gives you chiggers. Brain chiggers, and I die.”

“The king can cure chiggers,” she says.

“Isn’t that scrofula?”

Amber’s suddenly tired. “Okay. I guess you’re dead then, sorry.”

“Is this just the pattern with us?” Doug asks. “Leap and leap and it’s all very lovely, until one of us asks where we’re going to land?”

She rolls away, then rolls back. “Maybe we keep jumping.”

“Might land in a mud pie.”

“I always,” says Amber, “ate the damn things anyway.”

Thursday, March 2, 2006
A story yet Uncategorized

Beverly

Beverly puts her head in the oven, then her forearms. She twists–they say you can fit anywhere your shoulders fit, or maybe your hips? She gets both.

The back of the oven pushes out to plaster dust and plywood. It’s dark, but she doesn’t dare flick her lighter. Her cell phone’s cold light shows her tunnels and tubes, a round red door, the silver walls of ducts. She keeps crawling.

Tips of carrots in the ceiling: she stops and pulls. Cool dirt showers her, but she holds her breath and digs. It’s not far, and it smells good up there.

Wednesday, March 1, 2006
A story yet Uncategorized