QB
Staff of QB
The gentle pressure
Of his fangs against my neck;
One more little death.
‘Welcome!’ the receptionist says through a plastic smile.
Beth glances anxiously at the women scattered around the waiting room. No one is paying attention, but she still feels a flush of self-consciousness.
‘I have an appointment under my husband’s name,’ she whispers. ‘Harry Broderick.’
Bright and loud as ever, the receptionist says, ‘We have you here, Mrs Broderick. Please take a seat.’
In the face of the woman’s sparkling rictus grin, Beth finds a seat and doesn’t mention that she didn’t take her husband’s name.
Opposite sits a perfect, doll-like woman. She looks at Beth with what might be sympathy, but it’s hard to tell under the unmoving mask of her face.
‘First time?’ she asks. At Beth’s nod, she clucks. ‘Don’t worry. It’s easy. The doctor puts you under and then it’s done. You don’t even have to make any decisions!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your husband booked the appointment, right?’
‘Yes, but it’s just a consultation.’
‘There isn’t much to consult! They’ll only change you slightly this time, and he’ll have told them his preferences.’ She leans forward conspiratorially. ‘Much easier, if you ask me. If I had to choose, I’d never get anything done!’
‘Mrs Broderick?’
A figure in a white coat stands in the doorway, studying the waiting women.
‘That you?’ the woman opposite asks.
Beth Radley smiles for the first time since arriving and stands to make her way to the exit. ‘You know, it really isn’t.’
Lunabella liberally applies sunscreen — from wild-foraged beeswax — when, jar still open in her palm, something appears, glinting in the sunlight speckling the forest floor.
Someone?
A bulbous head bobs atop an impossible long, rubbery body.
That’s a frigging alien. She doesn’t panic; she’s disappointed… Nobody’s gonna believe this.
Its eyes land on her, hold her.
She can’t look away. Her mind is drained like a sink.
Believe what again?
She looks down. The sunscreen drips from the jar. Her skin is bright red, even though the light has softened high into the treetops. She curses. She should’ve gotten the store-bought stuff.
My breath comes fast and shallow. Desperate gulps ripped from the air against the rising tide of panic. The metal confines press into me from all sides, locking my arms in an awkward angle. Its surface runs slick with my cold sweat. I struggle, I kick, I scream against the unyielding walls, but their vice-like grip only contracts further on me, squeezing my lungs dry. “Let me out!” The little air left to me is thick and stifling. I’m going to die in here. Please, please, please…
"You’re such a wuss Casey. It’s just a prank! See you after lunch.”
House For Sale
Quiet Neighbors | NOT HAUNTED
“Paula, are you fucking kidding with that sign?” I slam the car door. This listing’s been a bitch and now Paula’s got jokes.
She gestures to the graveyard across the street. “People’ll think it’s funny and wanna see the place!”
“People will think it’s fucking haunted.” Which it is.
But not for long.
I head over to the cemetery, stilettos click-clicking on the asphalt. Take the broken stone steps two at a time, Paula following like a stumbling puppy.
“OI! GHOSTS!” My voice echoes across the gravestones.
No response.
Paula scrunches her face. “What’re you doing?”
“It’s broad daylight, why’re you whispering?” At her shrug, I continue. “Come out, come out wherever you are, Ghosties! Got a proposition for you!”
Dead silence.
“I know you’re here, assholes.”
The temperature drops ten degrees; I smirk. Misty apparitions surround us.
“Assholes?” The gravelly voice reverberates through my bones.
“Given the circumstances, ‘assholes’ seems light.” Arms crossed, I stare down the de facto leader: an expired school principal. He blinks first. Or an approximation of blinking. Straightening my shoulders, I switch to negotiation mode. “Look, you’re making it impossible for me to sell that house.”
“And?”
“If I don’t sell, I’ll have to fire Paula. I know you like her and the little trinkets she leaves you.” Paula’s gaze hits the dirt. “I wanna make a deal.”
“I’m listening.”
“Great! So… what do I need to do to get you into a new haunt today?”
The secret to writing an infallible work of literature is this: write from the first person perspective of someone else. If a critic dislikes one of your sentences, you can justifiably say that you were attempting to write something someone else would have written.
Even God Himself cannot criticize your work if you use this approach. God could have written
Macbeth or Hamlet while asleep, and He can write a book vastly superior to Hamlet if he desires. However, he cannot criticize your sentences if you are merely trying to accurately reflect the inept mental capacities of someone else, regardless of whether your own mental capacities are equally inept.
On a Portland day without rain
Two billy goats boarded a train
While looking for views
They made national news
The reaction has just been insane
Morning confessions churn in her throat like ash, though there is no altar, no listener, only the habit of speaking to herself in half-finished sentences. The words rasp, brittle, and fall apart before they reach the air.
Mirrors no longer flatter, chairs grow harder, nights longer. The house smells of dust and the faint iron of rain.
What remains is a slow ruin in the shape of a life - walls thinning, plaster shedding, memory gnawed hollow. She drifts from room to room, touching framed photographs of relatives she does not remember the names of, waiting for recognition that does not come.
Be holy or be nothing, she heard once, but now it means only: endure or vanish. She holds the words like pebbles in her palm, cold and heavy, useless.
Someone said the word sacrifice, but it tasted like salt. She remembers swallowing it, remembers the way it burned her throat. Now she keeps her mouth full of ash, a ruin in a ruined house, the prayer unfinished but burning anyway.