Help Wanted

My loyal and talented authors,

I need help managing this site. I read every single piece and think about which to select for the feature, as well as looking for a variety of interesting/evocative/whimsical images as prompts. However, you can see that I've slowed in my fervor as I become busy with other pursuits.

I'm looking for a co-editor for the site who would be willing to trade weeks with me. That way we don't have so much down time between publications. Any takers?

Much love and respect,
The Management

~Convent by kfad~

My convent. My place of peace, reflection, harmony, commune with God. Maybe I never had the calling. Maybe mother was right and I was running away. Always just running away.

I don't think I can be happy here anymore. Doing Gods work is tiring, and unrewarding. They all just want more. More food, better shelter, more drugs. There is no contentment with them. I had thought that I was spreading my joy of the lord with them. Turns out they just want the joy of the flesh. And they are willing to use the lord to find it.

More and more my convent feels like my prison.

~Turkey by Dragon~

"You're going to screw it up," said Sister.

"You're going to screw it up," said Brother. "You don't have the slightest idea how to use that baster. Give it to me."

"The hell I will." Sister squirted him in the eye with hot turkey juice, but brother ducked. Sister put the bird back in the oven.

"Why are we even bothering with this?" asked Baby. "Mom and Dad are gone. We never got along without them. Thanksgiving as a family is stupid."

"Just make the fucking pie," said Brother, peeling potatoes.

They bickered for five hours in the empty old kitchen. They told each other over and over how much they hated each other, how they were glad they'd never have to spend another moment in such miserable company now that they didn't have Mom and Dad to please.

The turkey came out perfect.

~Sex Appeal by K's Mumbo Jumbo~

"Sometimes, when I look at you, I think I am trying to touch the sun, catch the sun and hold it with my bare hands." she said, and then she bit her bottom lip, in that way she though was coy. Really, it was just kind of sad.

He knew what she thought of him, and that was what got him off. That she equated him with a star, and that she would melt from the slightest look from him. He knew he could get her to do anything and she wouldn't bat an eye. Sex appeal that could disolve morals and ethics.

~React by Cynthia~

My neighbors think I'm crazy. I'm not, I just like dancing on rooftops.

In the morning I get the kids off to school, making sure everything is in their backpacks. My husband goes to the office. I drink my second cup of coffee in silence. I then clean a room for that day. Each room is assigned a certain day, it doesn't vary. After the room is cleaned top to bottom, I take a short nap.

When the alarm sounds, I take my outdated CD player and an assortment of CDs to the roof. I plug the player into the building's electricity, turn up the volume, and move. I'll dance to anything. Nothing is planned in advance. I listen, feel, and react.

When my neighbors scream to knock it off, I know it's time to go back to my apartment. I'm back in time to prepare the after school snacks and to start dinner. I welcome my family back to a clean, happy home.

~Approval by Comrade Kevin~ ~Movie Star by Dragon~

My daughter has lived her life on a cultural divide. The very pious Muslim family to which I was born objects to Western forms of dress, as viewed here in this snapshot. Upon our yearly visit back to Saudi Arabia, Arianna must cover herself foot to toe in black muslin and most certainly never walk around in public without a burka covering her head.

My detractors and supporters alike denote me as a strong woman. Being subservient and ground underfoot, talking only to my husband when engaged in public conversation, never speaking directly to those around me, and always deferring to his will at all occasions was an indignity I was never willing to indulge. My long-lamenting father characterized me as wickedly willful at a young age.

So it was that I married an American citizen who brought me back. He was, at least to the comfort of my family, Arab and Muslim, and though his devotion to Allah had lapsed, he was good to put up suitable pretenses when he met my family. My father, no doubt relieved, approved of him.

~~~Two very different takes on the same image~~~

Krista knew better than to go inside Mr. Allison's house without telling her mom, but Mr. Allison was such a nice old man. He walked his two poodles around the block every morning and gave Krista Lifesavers from his windbreaker pocket.

She knew better, but he was so nice, and he let her play with the dogs, and he brought her presents: dolls to keep in his living room for when she came to visit, and makeup, which her mother wouldn't let her wear.

Mr. Allison had a big trunk full of fancy clothes and pretty ribbons for dress up, and he had a camera. They played such fun games: fashion model, movie star...

~Start-up by Cynthia~

Driving home, I thought about the presentation I made to a potential client. The group included six men, three women; five gung-ho company people, two wanna-bes, two know-nothings. Nine skeptics. Nine people who could make or break me. Nine I needed.

As I was reassessing, and doubting, my effort to drum up more business, I saw a pick-up truck in front of me.

"No, it couldn't be. I haven't seen one of those in decades."

Speeding up, I got close enough to see it was the same kind of truck my father drove to take us fishing.

Suddenly, I was eight years old again. My father was starting the engine, my brother and I were sitting in the front seat with him. This truck was finicky; you had to start it just right, or else it defied you. After the third turn of the key, it sounded like it was ready to go. Instead, the cab of the truck filled with a thick, acrid smoke. We bailed, leaving the doors open to clear the air.

My father waited a few minutes and tried again. The truck started up fine.Looking at us, dad said, "See, just keep trying. It'll work."

We made it to our fishing spot. We were quiet as we watched the lines - didn't want to scare the fish away. But when dad cleaned the fish, he'd talk. That's when we learned about his childhood, his dreams, his real world, his way of getting by.Now, as I passed the pick-up truck, I didn't look at the driver. I wanted my father to be driving. One more time, I needed him to tell me, "It'll work."

***What fine work all writers did on this piece. Please read Cynthia's gorgeous piece, then continue on to the additional writers' pieces in the comments section.***

~Ivan by Dragon~

I knew Uncle Ivan's shell, a withered corn husk wired to boxes that beeped and scratched evidence of his half-life. The few words he spoke were obscene. I filed those expletives for further examination even as my mom hustled me out to the candy machine.

He hung on for a decade.

And then, knowing there is nothing a teenage boy likes better than cleaning, Mom sent me to Ivan's abandoned cabin. Angry at the loss of my summer freedom, I threw dust-covered artefacts willy-nilly onto the lawn, delighting in the sound of broken glass. Then I stopped to look.

There was a 12-inch-long hunting knife with a keen edge and a bloodstained handle. Guns, countless guns in the bathroom, the kitchen, the foyer. A wardrobe holding 6 moldy tuxedos. A box of women's underwear. Used women's underwear. Desk drawers stuffed with stock certificates, land deeds, smoldering love letters dated 50 years ago. Large diamond rings for men's hands. Pornographic German magzines. Animal bones. A full set of mechanic's wrenches. Eight identically bulky and ancient walkie-talkies. Now I excavated the past, tripping over a child's rocking horse and life-sized framed photograph of a naked woman, until I reached the motherlode, the vein of precious metal: in the bedroom, 100 notebooks, neat handwriting, a life.

Diamond mines in Africa, gold mines in Canada, opal mines in Austalia, Uranium mines in the desert. Smuggling in South America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East. Political leaders and mafia bosses, merchants and marines, professors and scientists. Women on every continent, including Antartica.

There was nothing Uncle Ivan had not seen, nothing he had not done. The sum total of all that drives a man filled the lined pages. On the filthy bare boxspring, I read until the light failed, and dreamed myself an adventurer pursued by the French Legion, the mob, a thousand woman, state secrets locked to my wrist, a fortune in gemstones sewn into my collar, until my cell phone buzzed me back into my own prosaic reality.

My mother worried on the other end. "This could take a while," I told her. The power had been cut years ago, but I found a kerosene lamp and read on.

***Such wonderful, telling, chewy details.***

~Bastard Bill Kowalski by Al E. Yus~

Long about last August that bastard Bill Kowalski moved his sorry ass in. Parked his mattress at the top of the stairs, set his TV on a couple of cinder blocks and called it home. He'd sleep through the Today Show, but wake in time for Truth or Consequences and the soaps. Then he'd nap until the cartoons came on.

He had a little kitchen set up there in the hallway; a mini-fridge with a hot plate on top. This is him chowing down to his favorite meal, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. See that lady's leg? It's a cardboard cutout he fished out of a dumpster behind some porn shop. His idea of art.

His rent money dried up by October and we had to kick him out. I heard he's living at the Rescue Mission now. We couldn't peel the naked lady off the wall, so she's still there.

***What makes Bill a bastard? We are so curious...***

~Together by Guy Anthony de Marco~

Bob loved taking Carole to the lake. Their whole history together could be seen etched in the shoreline like rings in an ancient redwood.

Here's where they first met, arguing over who owned a particularly abundant fishing hole. His hat glinted with lures tied by his father. Her overalls rolled up to expose ballet-strengthened ankles.

This is where they drove off together, shedding Prom clothes as they chased each other across the sand; where their first fumbling lovemaking stripped away virginity. Bob proposed to Carole over by the worn flat rock jutting from the surface, their heads rising and falling rhythmically to their dogpaddling, until he slipped the ring on her finger under the surface.

She would laugh for years, claiming he duped her into marrying him. Their children would beg for the story to be retold, and they passed it on to their progeny like rings rippling out from Bob and Carole's exuberant presence in the water.

And today, Bob and Carole held hands until the sun set over the trees, staring out over the liquid book of their lives. With her final breath, he kissed his wife of sixty years and carried her out, buoyant with the help of the spirit of the lake, the water closing over the couple, welcoming them home.

Together.

***A big life in so few lines.***

~Marc Antony by Dragon~

Kira told Devon that Joni was going as Cleopatra.

"That bitch thinks she's so hot," Kira told him. "Think I'll go as a snake and bite her stupid ass."

Of course, we knew that Kira was going to go in sexy lingerie with some kind of fluffy ears and tail. But it gave me an idea anyway. I got together this great Julius Caesar costume, with laurels and everything. And when I saw Joni at the party, beautiful even under that awful wig, first thing, I called out to her.

"Your majesty," I said, and she looked me up and down and started to shimmy right there.

I might have had something too, but that punk, Devon just had to nose in. We thought he wasn't even coming. He didn't actually show up until the party was practically over, but he went all out with the costume anyway.

He came as Marc Antony.

***We love that bit about the snake. Other whimsical pieces in the comments.***

~Pink Motel by Cynthia~

"Pixies, my ass," the maid said to her reflection in the mirror.

She ripped off the sheets from the double bed and left them on the floor. She continued into the bathroom to scrub the tub, clean the toilet and empty the wastebasket that held several condom wrappers.

"At least she had the sense to use a rubber."

As the maid worked her way around the room dusting and vacuuming she wondered who was in here last night. It looked like it must have been some party - beer and vodka bottles, soda cans, pizza boxes, a white powder on the nightstand.

She just shook her head and kept on cleaning.

"Don't know why I work so hard. It's not like the people who come in here would even notice."

She put clean sheets on the bed and smoothed the thin bedspread until all the wrinkles were gone.

As she bent to pick up the dirtied sheets, she noticed a piece of paper under the bed.

On the crumpled piece of paper were the words, "Help me! I don't want to be here! Please help me!"The exclamation points all had little hearts at the bottom.

~At the Powwow by Ann Walters~

With a scattering of light in the eye the boy dances, his feathers weaving the colors of stone and corn, his head cocked in an attitude of supplication. His feet singe the ground where they touch.

Too many of the old men drink beer and shuffle from pickup to pickup comparing the size of their tires or the weight of the abandoned hopes that push their truck beds so low they threaten to scrape the road.

Some mothers busy themselves with costume changes and last-minute beadwork. Others sit on plastic chairs in the patchy grass and watch the girls with their subtle sways and hops, remembering vaguely what it feels like to flirt with only a flick of the hand.

A few old women sit in a circle, chanting softly to themselves. Whatever their words are, only they are meant to know. Behind them a baby crawls in the dirt and a pair of dogs mate quickly before chasing down stray crumbs of fry bread.

Back in the central ring, the boy bends. His fringed kilt sweeps the earth like a broom until he stops and kneels, quivering, on one knee. He would kiss the ground if he could, would love it into being with his breath, but a smattering of applause is the only answer to his prayer.

~Pilgrims by Dragon~

Papa said we was gonna be pilgrims, and I was even gonna get to cut school, but don't tell my mama. Papa says, don't tell your mama nothing, Punkin, cause your mama trying to take you away from me, that's how come she got them judges tie my hands with these restricted visitation rights.

Papa says, we're going to Graceland, Baby. You pack Suzy doll and John Bear up in your school sack and I'm gonna swing by for you Monday morning before they ring that first bell. You can have chicken nuggets and chocolate shakes all the way to Memphis.

Mama don't let me eat McDonalds much.

So I better not tell her how me and Papa's planning on being pilgrims.