Quid checked the list again, who the hell put all the vegetables and fruits on it, she wondered. The only items she had on the list were prepackaged meals – microwaveable stuff, mac and cheese, boxed rice, and ramen. It could have been anyone because they all ate a lot healthier than her. She grabbed…
Tag: fiction
Baby
Daddy called her stupid, useless, shit-for-brains, hey numbskull, and idiot among other things. Ma called her Tammy, Tammy Lynn, not right now baby, I’m busy, maybe later. Her teachers could never remember her name. Beatrice called her Tammy-Lynn, but that doesn’t fit you, how about Quidnunc, Quid for short. Friend, best friend. Her classmates called…
Fireworks
Very little can pull Quid away from books and articles and reports. She isn’t fond of TV or radio or movies and video games and board games never hold her long, but the thud of exploding shells overriding her heartbeat gets her every time. She remembers old, worn blankets spread over dewy grass and the…
Playlist 3 – Angry Prose Poem
Playlist: Angry Constraint: Rearrange the words to make a prose poem using only two lines at a time. Comes Day Again Rock me – exactly. Tell the bass to up the me, to step me up. Step upon all my need. Time known in anyone, I always like to not depend. The hundredth everything before…
Gilded
Quid owns very few books due to her almost perfect memory and recall, despite her crippling inability to answer direct questions. She borrows from libraries and reads articles online and spends afternoons browsing bookstores, but she can remember when she was younger the books she desperately wanted to own. The thick, ornately bound, gilt-edged classics…
Ocean
Quid grew up far away from large bodies of water. She never learned to swim, never went to the public pool (that cost money). She never took baths, only showers. The closest she got to swimming was when Benny from two trailers down shoved her into the pond and she nearly drowned. Water was not…
Playlist 9 – Impressions, D20
Playlist: Depressed Song 20: Don’t Wait by Dashboard Confessional Inches Have I ever been truly bare before another person? Completely stripped of all artifice, pretensions, control, and pretty lies? How rarely have I spoken without tempering my words, and tone, and thoughts. Never have I shared the whole of myself with another person, instead I…
Anniversary
There was a knock on the door. Quid marked her place and walked over to it. She opened without looking and was surprised to find her whole team there, Hye-Jung at the front holding a tray of rice cakes. Behind her Ivan had a homemade cake with an imperfect 100 in icing decorating the top….
Wedding
“I never thought Elita and Moore would get hitched,” Galen said under his breath to Quid as they watched the bridal party move toward the altar. “Why?” Quid asked, leaning closer. He shrugged as he answered, “Thought theirs was more of a ‘fuck it out of their systems’ kind of thing.” Quid though about that….
Unremarkable
His eyes were too close to the surface of his face. He had a protruding forehead, but lacked the haunted, deepset eyes. His nose was unspectacular and undefined, wide and rather flatish, it blended in with the rest of his face. He had dark brown eyes where the pupil was undifferentiated from the iris and…
Laundry
Quid did her laundry once every other Wednesday night. It was when the Laundromat was the emptiest and Quid didn’t have to fight for the machines. She had learned early not to bring reading material with her because shuffling through a stack of books Howard Berg style attracted too much attention and she was hard…
Little Gentian 