Category: July Stories

Reading the Room

Photo by Monica McHenney

If Sadie had any idea this girl, who’d assured Sadie they didn’t know each other, would look at her hand and turn her world upside down, she would have walked right past that “Psychic” sign in the window and bought a sack of corn instead.

The girl said someone was lying to her. Sadie’s sister, always a suspect; maybe her boyfriend was playing around; then again, the neighbor claimed she hadn’t seen the Amazon package that Sadie’s cousin sent.

Sadie recognized the girl in her P.E. Class.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” 

“My aunt’s the psychic. Yeah, I was lying.”

A Snow Globe Shakes

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Wind and sun rage,

hair shines black.

A figure dances,

silken smooth as kitten’s fur or slender morning grass.

A child, yet grown, watches.

Eyes intent with wonder,

they mouth questions,

love,

delight,

a searching soul

dreaming dreams in endless night.

A globe: a house, some trees, a forest deep.

A cataclysm shakes the frigid

orb. Though small, it breaks the world apart.

Snow shoots up, explodes as crystal ice on glass.

The simple juxtaposition lays bare the base. Flaking plastic drifts over

earth and rusting heaps of junk. The scene, innocently ambiguous,

innocence itself subject to a melting world.

Afternoon Nap

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Fleeting memories of something standing behind

me on a path. It catches up,

steps a crackling of gravel that grate,

disrupt, scatter the inner rhythm of the narrative flow.

Something omitted, textual. I keep

to the point, a crucial missing piece.

Pen in hand, letters to words.

Sentences slide past closed eyes, the ink dissembling,

thoughts assembling,

meaning transforms a tissue of dreams.

A new idea stands.

Can it survive the waking world?

Piercing

light delivers me from sleep. The ghostly paper vanishes,

the words, a memory.

The poem a floating fragment,

a vision, a fleeing image shrouded by forgetting.

Gnome Migration to Points North

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The gnomes stayed ahead of the snow melt, seeking higher ground to escape the heat wave. Sweat dripped from under red brimmed caps. Seven months pregnant, Svena raised her hand above her head. She stopped and sipped from a nearly empty animal skin. “It’s no good,” she said. “The forest’s been cleared. You see the stumps.”

The leader said, “We’ll go over the pass to the other side.”

“Dry and dead.” A murmur rose to the point of rebellion. They believed a full womb confers second sight.

“So where?” The man sat. He filled a pipe and lit it.

“North.”

Runaway

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Rigor mortis didn’t set in. Snow lay in front of the open door, a box of apples scattered beside her. She’d said nothing about her past, but the quality of her thick wool cape suggested she came from a good family. She told them fear had made her run away. 

When the doorbell rang she wanted to hide. When she realized that no one but her was home, she felt obliged to answer. Someone needed to take the Amazon delivery. In slo-mo, Wicked Stepmother brushed an apple against Snow’s lips. Snow’s last wish countered the poison, but not the spell.

What the Mirror Said

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Madge looked in the mirror. With all the money she’d spent on age-defying creams, she’d expected fewer wrinkles; soft, supple skin; and rose red lips, plump and full.

“Young lady,” Madge checked her watch. How annoying. It was so busy. “I’ve been waiting.” 

“So sorry, ma’am. Just a sec.” 

Madge watched the girl ring up a sale. The lines in the customer’s face told a story of many smiles. The girl’s skin was unblemished, smooth like a baby’s bottom. I’d kill for that face.

Madge checked the mirror again and it said, “No. Look deeper. Make-up won’t change your heart.”

They Think of Everything

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Dear Beanstalk Vacuum Support,

Our Rosie’s mapped a passage between rooms, but we can’t see it. Might Wee Folks be living there? Like, house elves or fairies? The dishwashers seem to run and empty themselves at night, though senility might explain that.

Please advise whether we should make this hidden space a no-go zone. Our cleaning schedule could interfere with nocturnal sleep schedules. Also, someone might get hurt.

Grimm Brothers

Dear Misters Grimm,

No worries. Your vacuum has a Little People detector to protect your guests. Happy cleaning.

Jack Giant, Beanstalk Magic Support

P.S. Give me feedback at https://www.Moo.mage Thanks.

Watching Too Much Escapist TV

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I’ve always wanted to find a hidden passage behind a bookcase or though a trap door in the floor. Wonderland or Narnia. A priest hole would work. Maybe that’s why British mysteries hold such appeal for me. So when Rosie the Roomba mapped a passage from my study to the street, I was ecstatic, if confused. Was the opening hidden under the rug? Had we covered the exit to the street with a raised bed like we did the clean-out for the sewer?

My husband says the new room is a mapping error from Rosie getting stuck. I hope not.

A Year Later, A New Landscape

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I send my mother cards because she has trouble answering the phone. Today’s is a Hungarian landscape from World War II. It’s remarkably free of destruction and death, unlike what we see in war photos from the newspapers.

The place in Texas where she’s living resembles the card’s frontpiece. There’s a lake. There are houses. The hills are a dull green, shot through with bare soil. A year ago, when she hated where she was, my mother threatened to move to Czechoslovakia. Next to Hungary. Close to Ukraine. I’m glad she didn’t. Here, she imagines escape without confronting the reality.

What If Nothing Was Private?

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The Notorious RBG’s ghost woke Clarence Thomas. “There are easier ways to get a divorce.”* The wry humor, it was her alright. He couldn’t sleep.

Whoda thought? The anti-miscegenation law passed in Mississippi, up for review soon. It looked like Loving v. Virginia might go the way of Roe v. Wade.

“We’ll move, if need be. You must be consistent,” Ginni had said. “Think of your legacy.” Shocked that she was more loyal to originalism than she was to them, to him…

What if she was right? Then again, Republican majorities and President DeSantis made federal action inevitable. Decisions, decisions.

* Thanks to Moira for this wording.