101 Words

“Come, Fool, entertain your king,” the chancellor instructed, pushing the jester forward, keen to raise the king’s spirits before requesting yet more money. The jester shook his sceptre. Bells jingling, he whispered to the grotesque atop.

“What nonsense is this you speak to your puppet?” the king enquired.

“I remind him who is master and who is the marotte,” the jester said.

“Why so?”

“Lest the puppet becomes the puppeteer,” the jester replied, bowing courteously.

The king wafted the chancellor away and turned to the jester. “Sometimes a king may be a fool,” he said, “but you, Fool, are never so.”

“Better luck next time!” Lucy grins.

A river of jealousy bleeds through me. Her swan wings dance onto the stage. The lack of grace infuriates me.

Rejected, my feathers gather dust.

I watch from the sidelines as the performance ends. Lucy embraces the ballet master—lovers incognito. My throat tightens—a toxic bile in my mouth.

Closing evening:

The master scowls at me. “Sophie! Get ready! You’re taking the lead.”

Ruffling my quill, I prepare to fly.

Gliding through the air—a bird set free.

The curtain lowers, the audience rises.

Cheers and whistles echo.

My face alight.

It’s My Night.

Tall and curvy with glossy black curls and smudged cherry lipstick, the girl adjusts her clingy red dress and glances nervously up and down the darkened street corner. As she slinks out of the dented silver car with tinted windows, her stilettos hit the pavement, producing that distinct metallic echo that signals a woman on the prowl. She cranes her neck up wistfully towards the stars, wondering how it all went so wrong. Tonight will be the last time, she vows, placing her hand reassuringly over her faux-leather purse, palming the pack of sleeping pills she stole from her last customer.

At first, I thought it was the end-of-life morphine drip that made my mother smile for the first time in years. “Do you see him?” she asked.

“Who?”

“My brother, Johnny—he’s right there!” she said, looking toward the foot of the bed.

“Mom, Johnny died over fifty years ago,” I said gently.

“I know, but he’s here now,” she said, then closed her eyes forever—her long-suffering race now run.

I told the hospice nurse about my mother’s final words. “Isn’t that kind of eerie?” I asked.

“Not at all,” the nurse replied. “Someday, someone will come for you too.”

I open my eyes.

My platoon is slaughtered, along with the half-organic, half-rock aliens of this wretched, sandy planet.

“Lieutenant,” says the Artificial Intelligence in my head. “Enemies approaching. I’ve activated the explosive charge in your body. I’ll trigger it when you are surrounded. Since you have found Helium-3 in this area, we’ll send your pay to your sister. She’ll be discharged from the army at age 13.”

Tears flow. She only needs to survive one year longer than me.

When they arrive, the leader rips my arm off with a mental blast. His confidants surround me.

I close my eyes.

Petunia lives in the perpendicular place where the cupboard meets the floorboards. At twilight she skulks outward, moon-drunk, leaving bite marks in the butter, dusty footprints across polished countertops. She retreats in reverse at dawn, macerates the night’s events.

Eventually they set traps for her: sharp steel and soft cheese. She surveys them with narrow eyes and twitching nose, chewing through their wires in return, savouring the electric tang.

Next Monday the exterminator will come, his cloying chemicals leaving her breathless and bloated and bloody; but for now, she patters across the kitchen, blissfully unknowing, lungs swelling with fresh, star-soaked air.

Suzanne sat on a large log, looking out to sea. The tide had fully retreated. It was one of the lowest neap tides of the year. Large patches of pungent sandy mud filled the spaces between the exposed rocks, acres of seafloor normally covered with plenty of water. She could see him in the distance, collecting the large blue-black mussels and depositing them into a pail. She had met him once before and he had invited her to accompany him once again, with the promise of a home-cooked meal afterward. Suzanne agreed with pleasure. She was attracted to his well-developed muscles.