In the mirror across the bar she is twelve. She is standing in the wings of the Big Top, breathing the scent of hay and earth and animal with deep, happy inhales. She hears the crowd’s cheer rise and fall in waves, pictures a man and a woman flying through the air in matching blue and white costumes. She looks at her own costume. It is pink. Color, Maya, color! The circus is all about color! It is the voice of her father, a voice she has never known but somehow recognizes. I want to match you and mom, she says.But you match Kimba!

“Another?” She is back in the bar, her elbows leaning on the mahogany counter, her fingers wrapped around a sweating glass. The man she has been dating for three months touches her hand. He is a handsome man and she wonders if that’s why it was so easy to say “yes” to his dinner invitation all those weeks ago.

Maya looks down at her empty glass. She doesn’t remember the last sip.

“Okay,” she says. He lifts his hand from hers, and her whole body aches in the absence of his touch.

In the mirror across the bar, Kimba lifts her gray trunk, tickling at the edge of the curtain, playing with a fraying cotton rope that hangs from the exposed metal frame above. Kimba is wearing a pink ruffle around her neck. Kimba doesn’t like the ruffle. She endures it. Maya thinks this is how she feels about her pink outfit, too.

The applause becomes a symphony. Spotlights flash by the entryway. Her father sprints past, blowing a kiss to Maya. Her mother slows, reaches up and wraps her fingers around her daughter’s pink-slippered foot. Stand tall, her mother says, then follows her father back into the darker rooms where circus acts are stitched together with sawdust and magic.

“You seem quiet tonight,” he says as her drink is refilled. He notices things. She wonders if this is why it was so easy to say “yes” to spending the night after that first dinner. She had never done that before. Not so soon.

“I’m fine,” she says. He knows this means she needs the quiet; that she’s daydreaming or remembering or sorting. He will touch her again to acknowledge this. And he does, his hand on her shoulder.

In the mirror across the bar, Maya is atop Kimba, carefully adjusting her stance to stand tall as the elephant marches behind a parade of clowns into the biggest ring of the three-ring circus. Fireflies spark from the crowd when the youngest star makes her entrance. The flashes don’t really help, she hears her father say later, on the drive home in a rusty brown station wagon. The cameras are too far away for the flashes to matter. Maya leans against the car door, watching the blurring trees. They matter to me, she whispers to the clouds.

“Do you want to get out of here?” He asks. She feels the weight of his hand on her shoulder. He wants to go.

“No. I want to stay.” When she says it, there is too much bite in her words. She knows this and wants to apologize, but instead she lifts her glass and sips, disappointed by her distraction, then surprised by the taste of pomegranate.

In the mirror across the bar, she is twelve years old and standing on the back of an elephant. Head forward, she hears in echo. Head forward and smile big. The smiling is easy; she feels like she is flying. But she wants to turn and catch her father’s eye. She imagines him standing in the shadows, holding her steady with raised eyebrows and white knuckles, confident in his teaching, hopeful in her learning.

“Where are you?” he asks. His voice is soft, almost too soft to hear above the music that’s playing in the bar. She knows this song.

You don’t even have to speak,
if you keep looking at me.

She catches her breath and turns to look at him.

“Kiss me,” she says and he does. The kiss tastes of salt and lime and ends too soon. It is a perfect kiss. He pulls back and looks into her eyes, not pleading, not probing. Lingering.

In her peripheral vision she sees the girl of twelve in the mirror. The girl turns her head to see her father and loses her balance. She begins to fall.

“Whoa,” he says, catching her as she slides off the stool. “You okay?”

His hands are strong.

“A little dizzy,” she says. He doesn’t let go until a measured moment later.

“I’ll get your coat.”

“Wait,” she says. “Don’t go.” He sits back down. She turns to the mirror behind the bar. The little girl is gone. In her place, a middle-aged woman who looks vaguely familiar, apart from the tired lines on her face and the bags under her eyes.

“I look like a wreck,” she says.

“You look like a princess,” he says. “Is it okay if I say that?” Then he smiles, because he knows it’s one of the things about him she finds charming – the way he asks permission to pay her a compliment only after he’s already offered it.

“Yes, it’s okay,” she says. He’s a good man, she thinks. She reaches across the bar and rests her hand on his.

“I was at the circus,” she says.

“You were at the circus?”

“A moment ago when you asked, I was at the circus. I’ve never actually been. But I was twelve years old and wearing a pink ballerina costume and pink shoes and I was balancing on an elephant as it circled the arena. Everyone was cheering and there were hundreds of fireflies and…my parents were there. They were trapeze artists.” She is watching him watch her as she speaks. He is fully engaged, not queuing up a response, but listening for the things she doesn’t say.

He turns to look at her reflection in the mirror. She turns, too. He is handsome in reflection.

“Am I crazy?” she asks.

He lifts her hand and kisses it.

“Yes,” he says, and she hears “you’re beautiful.” She is about to cry when he speaks again. They are perfect words.

“Tell me more about the fireflies.”

: : : : : : : : : :

By day, Steve Parolini plays a “doctor” where he doles out fabulous, free editorial advice at noveldoctor; by night he occasionally spins word magic at Counting on Rain where you can find his original post.
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Featured by Story Editor Robin Dance :: @PensieveRobin

(photo credit)

Once there had been a mother.

He remembered her, a bit – her breath that smelled like communion grape juice and cigarettes, her harsh laugh and her sudden rages, the way he was frightened and small and hiding underneath his bed, in his tent, under the slide at the playground, hiding from her giant hitting hands and her loud voice.

Ruby made her go away.

He didn’t remember much of that night – nothing much more than Ruby giving him warm funny tasting milk at bedtime and then his sleepy awareness of raised yelling female voices and a sudden loud noise and then silence. Then he woke up the next morning to Ruby bright and extra cheerful and the kitchen extra clean and a new vegetable garden in the backyard.

He likes working in the garden. He likes putting his hands in the dirt, likes watering the fat jolly vegetables. Ruby smiles and brings him lemonade and they have picnics for lunch and sometimes he sits on the swing even though the swing is getting smaller and smaller all the time.

He keeps forgetting to ask Ruby about the shrinking swing. He forgets sometimes that Grandma went away a long time ago and finds himself standing in front of her house where strangers live now. He forgets that Mom went away, too, and hides under the piano bench, hides under the front steps, until Ruby lures him out with gummy worms and trips to the ice cream store.

“Ruby,” says their neighbour Mrs. Huffington over the fence. “You’re doing a wonderful job looking after him, but your whole life is passing you by.”

He remembers that sometimes, the way he remembers the surprising bits of red in the kitchen, the loud sound, his mother’s sharp breath and giant hurting hands. But then it’s time for a picnic and the sun is bright and it’s time to work in the garden again, their special garden where the vegetables come up so big and ripe.

::

Beck has even more spooky Halloween stories with some of your favorite characters, like the one featured here.  She also writes with wit and compassion about her life and family. She just started a new blog, check it out.
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Featured by Editorial Director, Jennifer Doyle | @playgroupie

Cylence Gray was 12 years old when she stopped believing in god and started believing in love. Standing alone, and to the side, slender pale arms wrapped around her black waist, Cylence watched the magpie, head cocked, watching her. Cylence liked that her face was turned to the sky. It meant that she didn’t have to look at the spring wet hole they were slowly lowering him into.

Cylence had been cracked open by grief and from that opening faith flew. Many years later she remembered. The tugging was the worst part. Being forced to look, to acknowledge, to know. As if somehow she could unknow. The tubes and the rattle rattle death breath, the corridors, closing in on her, as she waited, as they all waited. The mashed potato and gravy portrait her mother painted on the white wall. Her mother’s anger, at her, at her, for being there, for having held his hand and for having heard his heart beat when it stopped. She would never not know. Never unknow.

But on this day, with her mudcaked shoes and her splattered stockings, Cylence forgets and blurs it all. Face turned to the blue she closes her eyes and wishes. Cylence wishes for love, for love that knows how it feels to walk on ground that cracks and opens under your feet, for love that holds safe. 12 days later, standing in that same spot, Cylence smiles at the tall boy standing six plots over. And as she shyly walks over to him, flowers in her hand, she sees his name engraved in the hard stone, just like hers, 6 plots back. She thinks it strange that they both already know where it ends. They shouldn’t know. He asks her about her ending and tells her about his. They know where it ends but they don’t know how to get there. Cylence memorizes the face of the boy with the ocean in his name, and later, when it rains, as it always does where they live, she feels warm.

She Was is a storyteller.  This story is the second one about Cylence Gray.  The first story can be found here.
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Featured by Editorial Director, Jennifer Doyle | @playgroupie

She picked up the glass, twirling the crystal stem in her fingers, holding the paper-thin bowl up to the light. They were the perfect glasses–Baccarat, not Waterford, as everyone knew Waterford was too fussy. All those facets, she thought bitterly. I don’t want to drink out of the Chrysler building.

She remembered the day they picked them out–well, the day she did, anyway, whirling around Neiman’s with the glowing red gun. He resisted initially, insisting that they were too expensive.

“Babe, I don’t want my grandmother forking over $300 for a single water glass,” he said. “Can’t we get these instead?”

He’d pointed to a display of Lenox glasses. Goddamn LENOX. She rolled her eyes at the memory. As if I’d be caught dead entertaining with a $36 glass. She won him over by insisting that the glasses were an investment.

“An investment in a lifetime of memories,” she cooed.

Stupid. I’m so stupid.

She turned the Baccarat upside down again, watching the light bounce off the rounded stem. She put it back on the table and twisted her hands for a moment before letting them fall into her lap. They rustled in the folds of her tulle slip, and she realized with horror that she was still wearing her wedding dress.

Her hands smoothed the fabric as she glanced down at herself admiringly.

Well, no one can say I didn’t look fabulous.

She almost snorted. Of course she looked fabulous–she was wearing a seven-thousand dollar dress. She’d loved it immediately–made of the softest silk, it was strapless and perfectly fitted to the waist before cascading into a million tiny little ruffles so fine they looked like delicate feathers. Monique Lhuillier herself probably hired twenty thousand Filipino children to hand-stitch each individual fold in the fabric.

That, too, had been an argument — this time, with her father. Her parents were generous to a fault, but even they were less than thrilled with the cost of the dress. They’d asked her to stay under three thousand dollars — a perfectly reasonable sum, she now realized — but she’d wheedled and begged, insisting on its critical role in the most important day of her life. It was her father who finally caved, and when he’d written the check, she was oddly triumphant. She’d known he wouldn’t refuse her.

She sat back in her chair and picked up the glass again. The day had been perfect, she realized. Precisely what she’d always wanted. The flowers — cascading orchids in the deepest velvet purple — were of a dream. The cost of those, too, had been staggering, fueled by their purported rarity.

She buried her head in her hands. All those details, she thought. The centerpieces. The dupioni silk custom chair covers blended of the subtlest of colors — a light cream and the softest pearl.

She lifted her head and looked at her engagement ring. Nine months later, and it still took her breath away. She twisted it around, remembering that just yesterday it had stood alone. Yesterday, when things were completely different than they were today. Yesterday, when she was happy and warm with the anticipation of her wedding day.

Yesterday, before she realized this was all a horrible mistake.

Jonniker is a mother, a writer, a twitterer, and a force to be reckoned with.

Her original, glorious post debuted the now-disbanded Polite Fictions, and it now lives for eternity here on Story Bleed.  Subscribe to her personal blog through RSS or Networked Blogs
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Featured by Story Editor Shannon | @MrLady

That morning, Ted got dressed, picked up his clubs and headed for the links. At the clubhouse, he had a drink, a Bloody Mary reeking of vodka and Tabasco. The TV played CNBC, news of the financial storm overturning all boats. Ted ordered another drink, handing over his credit card to the bartender.

“Charge it while it still works,” he said.

The first golfers were heading out into the humid dawn air. A group of vacationing orthodontists were looking for a fourth. Ted fell in with their group, a little tipsy from the vodka.

Ted sent his first shot racing into a drainage ditch, a line drive that sent up a big splash in the early morning mist.

“I’m taking a mulligan,” Ted said.

“Yea, it’s practice!” the shortest of the lot said. He was the oldest, the richest, and was the leader of the group. His name was Danny.

Ted’s second swing wasn’t much better. He seemed to slip on the dew-wet grass, his left leg jerking out, as if it had been yanked like a marionette. The ball overflew the drainage ditch and bounced over the neighboring fairway.

“I should’ve hit the driving range,” he explained.

“Hey, it’s early,” Danny said.

Ted took another mulligan and, on his third try, sent a decent drive down the middle of the fairway. Danny then launched a ball high over his, by a good fifty yards. His colleagues congratulated him.

“It’s the Bertha’s!” Danny exclaimed, holding the oversized driver in his hand. The club was nearly as tall as he was.

Ted scooped his ball out with a nine iron and sent it arcing onto the green. Danny did likewise.

The men lined up for their putts. The orange sun was just over the palm trees, starting to heat up the day.

“Did I tell you?” Danny said. “Winner buys drinks.”

“Got it,” Ted said, aligning himself with the hole. He was short by a good ten feet. Danny sunk his ball, a smile alighting on his face.

“Well, you got plenty of time for golf now, you bastard,” one the other orthodontists kidded him, “now that you got other people working for you.”

“That’s right,” Danny said. “No pulling teeth for me. I got a couple Chinese gals to do that. I just collect the money!”

On the second hole, Ted lost another shot in the water and took another mulligan.

“You’re going to run out of balls,” Danny said with a laugh.

As they rode in the cart down the fairway, Ted listened to Danny describe the house he was building. The total cost was “north of a million bucks,” with marble imported from Italy, an Olympic-sized pool and servant quarters.

Ted began cheating on the next hole. It went beyond just taking mulligans, which he continued to do. He deliberately undercounted his shots and insisted on “do-overs” when he missed a putt.

For the first couple holes, the orthodontists were amused. At the ninth tee, the beer cart caught up with them. Ted chugged down a Bud light. No one was talking to him.

“I’m calling that a four,” Ted said at the tenth hole.

“You sure?” Danny asked. “You got some funny accounting. More like a five or a six.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Ted said with a grin. The sun was now well over the horizon. Sweat rolled down his temples.

“They say if you cheat at golf, you cheat at life.”

Ted was glad that his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. He thought of his wife, the money, everything else.

“Who believes that shit?” he said, forcing out a laugh.

The rest of the round continued in silence. A couple of times he caught Danny looking at him with disdain when he announced his score. But the man didn’t say anything. And neither did his colleagues.

On the 18th hole, Ted sent his putt wide by a couple of feet. He tapped it in.

“You going to count that?” Danny asked.

“Are you kidding? It’s a tap-in. You never count tap-ins.”

“You don’t?” The other orthodontists had gathered around their leader.

“Not where I’m from,” Ted said. He quickly added up his score. “I got a 67. How about you gentlemen?”

Danny’s face was red, either from anger or the heat.

“Sixty-seven!”

“That’s what I got. Guess you guys are buying drinks.”

“You did not get a sixty-seven.”

“Sure I did.”

The other orthodontists chimed in, telling him that he was mistaken or worse. Ted grinned tightly. He held up his scorecard for the men to see. Danny grabbed the paper from his hand. “That’s bullshit.”

Ted stepped into Danny, pushing the man back with his chest. “You calling me a liar?” He loomed over the man, fists at the ready. The other orthodontists faded backwards.

Danny looked up at Ted, anger switching to fear. “No, no, for god sakes, it’s just a game,” he said, his voice soft.

The orthodontists drifted away. They walked back to their golf carts, with careful glances back at Ted to make sure he wasn’t going to rush them. He stood strong on the tee, the 18th flag at his back. Ted willed them to turn, to charge him, to fly at him in a flurry of punches and kicks, with Danny, wealthy prick Danny leading the way, encouraging the violence. He wanted all three of them on him like a mob, a desperate and legitimate struggle for survival. He wanted it. He wanted the feel of Danny’s fist in his gut and then an honest fight on the closely-cropped grass.

But they were too good, or too wise. Ted remained on the green, watching with disappointment the steady retreat of their golf carts.

::

Joe Flood is a writer and photographer based in Washington, D.C.
This piece, Cheating at Golf, is previously unpublished.
He’s the author of the novel, Murder in Ocean Hall.
Follow Joe on Twitter @joeflood
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::

Featured by Editorial Director, Jennifer Doyle | @playgroupie

I leaned heavily against a wall. Trying to catch my breath was a mistake but I couldn’t keep running. I just couldn’t. “BIG RABBIT IS, WE SAY IS, SON ARE YOU LISTENING, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” was painted along the wall. How they found space for the lettering I don’t know.

I found the strength to keep moving.

The thing of it was, I didn’t have the heat on me. No one was after me and I could’ve just gone back home. But after what I saw that night, after that, I just couldn’t. I found what they did to Porky. Poor bastard.

Technically they took him to ask a few questions. Technically he had decided to move to another city. Technically… a lot of things. This night someone had left me a key to a door I didn’t know existed, and it was there I found him. Well, films of him, anyway.

Stripped naked in a cage of rats, he squirmed and squealed like, well, to be fair, a pig. I’m not sure why I was given the key, the directions, shown what I was shown but I had a feeling…

For weeks now I kept a journal. A journal of my thoughts and dreams. Stuff that I wasn’t supposed to have, much less think. It must have been found. So I ran. I ran though no one actively seemed to pursue me. I ran to find my love. Marvin. Oh, how his helmet shined in the light. He wasn’t from around here, as it turned out. Despite what we were told. He said the wars were fake. He said he loved me. He said we’d be safe.

Damn it, I couldn’t break down in tears. Not yet. Not until…

Our front door was open. Just the tiniest bit but enough to notice. I went in anyway, what else could I do? Inside I found nothing. They had taken him. I knew I would be next. I had earned it. I looked behind me and saw that I was being followed. Followed by my own weaknesses this whole time.

They came for me then. They re-educated me. They reminded me that duck season is rabbit season, thinking you saw a puddy tat is seeing a puddy tat, and that freedom is slavery.

In the end, I walked out, on my own. On. My. Own. As we all were. Monsters like me, Gossamer, we don’t meet interesting people. Not if we’re smart.

Featured by Story Editor Shannon | @MrLady

Adam P Knave is a freelance writer of blogs, fiction, comics and columns. Find Adam P Knave on Amazon here, and his original post on his blog, Adam P Knave {dot} com.
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Juliet: I thought you were going to take out the trash.

Romeo: It’s your turn for the trash, my week to bag the recyclables. Look at the chore wheel on the fridge, for Chrissakes.

Little Tybalt (looking up from his Legos): Mommy, Daddy swore!

Romeo: A greater power than we can contradict hath thwarted our intents to be the best husband and father, I’m sorry, Little Tybalt. It’s just that Mommy and Daddy have been through a lot.

Juliet: I’ll say. There was a plague on both our houses.

Little Tybalt: Hunh? What’s Mom talking about?

Juliet: Never mind. Why don’t you go play Wii?
(Little Tybalt takes his Legos and sulks off)

Juliet (reminiscing while drying the Ikea china): Remember how in love we were?

Romeo: Do I! It seemed to me you were a rich jewel upon the cheek of night.

Juliet: It seemed to me that parting was such sweet sorrow, and now I can’t wait for girl’s night out.

Romeo (slapping his palm to his forehead): O woe!

Juliet: What is it, honey?

Romeo: I forgot to take out the clothes from the washer. They’ll be all mildewy.

Juliet: Again? Didn’t I tell you not to forget to take them out of the washer? Little Tybalt’s gym clothes were in there and he needs them for gymnastics tomorrow. O woeful, woeful, woeful day! Most lamentable day. Most woeful day that ever, ever I did yet behold O day, O day, O day! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a day as this. O woeful day! O woeful day!

Romeo: Is there no pity sitting in the clouds that sees into the bottom of my grief? I’ll rewash them.

Juliet (collecting herself): Good. I’m going to go upstairs and read. You coming up?

Romeo: No, I’m going to watch ESPN and probably fall asleep on the couch.

Juliet: Oh.

Romeo: Yeah.

Juliet: Well then, goodnight, hon. (Romeo gives her a chaste, long-married peck on the cheek. She returns the affection with a non-lingering rather limp hug.)

Romeo: We’re so lucky.

Juliet: Aren’t we?

CURTAIN

# # #
Featured by Story Editor Shannon | @MrLady#

Elizabeth Bastos has been absolutely brilliant at Goody Bastos since November of 2009. Read her original post here.
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And in that instant

I am aloft in a way I’ve never known before, a growing cushion of air rising to fill the space between my skin and my seat, the wheels and the road, my head snapping back with effortless, eyeblink ferocity and colliding with the headrest (the crush of my hair against leather, pressing through the foam to touch the steel within) then a whipcrack snap forward, vertebrae compressing and releasing like pistons firing at neural speed, the engine still running strong and loud and my heart surging with adrenaline and

in the periphery of my vision I can see the earth spin and turn, as if the axis of the world has shifted

I think: how odd

and the sound, the sound, it’s incredible, that terrible squeal and crush of metal bending and tearing, iron wrenching from iron and glass and the compression of air in my lungs and those seconds – one, and two, and the long heartbeat stretch to three – when it all dissolves to echo and gravity fades to myth and I become aware that I am still pressing down on the accelerator, as though I might catch up to this impossibly swift rotation of earth and sky and in matching its speed slow its pace and return to the world I’d known and all I hear is the engine the wheels freed from the restraints of physics straining to catch hold on this cool evening air and

then a corner connects – I cannot tell which one, and in not understanding I lose some illusion of control – and there is a new eruption of torque and velocity, of moving so many different ways at once, and I am the tail of a kite arcing and spiraling in a strong wind, diving and soaring and fighting against myself and this thin brace of fabric that cuts deep across my waist and the forgiving skin where neck and shoulder meet

where you had rested your head, seeking solace and comfort and this

is all

it’s all happening so fast

and the adrenaline fills me with strength and fury and my arms and chest swell — with will, with purpose, with terror and defiance and

something catches

and I feel my leg twist and churn beneath me, the thick muscle of my thigh stretching and turning upon itself and in a flash I think of the nest of tendons and ligaments like ivy wrapping ’round a trunk of bone (I imagine it wood, bending but unbowed) and then something breaks free and I feel it rise through my chest that insane rush of pain desperately escaping my body and

the windshield

the glass dissolves into shooting stars

and it is beautiful and I am screaming and

…

See the original post on Polite Fictions.
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(Scroll down to find the audio link to hear the poem read by Marcus Goodyear.)

for David Tulley

The pianist plays alone every time
learning not to let the world decide
when he creates and when he rests.
Studios, concert halls, practice rooms
hallowed, not hollow, never empty.
The walls, the chairs, the carpet tremble
with potential decisions. Synthetic
fibers of carpet twist together,
their friendships forming expectant
berber curls, their voices hushed
waiting for the performer’s approach.
He clacks the cover from its keyboard,
coughs once and begins to say this
I am
Meaning something more than self,
more than These hands are mine. These legs
pump pedals, sustain notes, build chords.
This room was not empty before.
I have not filled it except with thanks.
Though as for that, no thanks
depends on him or the one listening,
who wandered into the studio looking
to kill time and fighting music instead.
The battle lost, the audience slumps
low in the back row and hears
practice give voice to everything here.

You can also listen to the poem as read by Marcus: Practice Is an Art

Editor’s pick by Heather Goodman at L’Chaim. I chose this piece because of the beauty of the creation of art, not just the product. Marcus Goodyear writes about poetry and philosophy on his blog, Goodword Editing. When someone asked him to share more of himself, Marcus said, “I have to admit that I was a bit confused. Which ‘me’ did this person mean exactly? You know, more poetry, more philosophy.”

You can find more of his poetry here. He’s also written about how to revise and edit poetry. He’s a believer in the sound of poetry and embeds audio files with his poetry. I agree. Listening is lovely.

You can subscribe to his blog here.