EXCERPT FROM:
BLUE VILOET
The garden looked dark. I sprawled out on the large pine framed bed. White puffy duvet clamped tightly between my legs. It was hot. Damp hot. Hot even for summer. I left the window open and a light breeze graced my thighs. Eyes wide-dry and awake, I looked to the garden sitting under the steely moon, turning plants and grass to metal and jade. Still. Dark. Cold looking, even against the heat. Among the precisely planted white asters and sage, one flower poked higher than the rest. A wild one. A tall deep muddy blue one with a bright yellow centre. I’d never noticed it before, which was odd. Wild flowers don’t escape my sight while tending. I stared. For so long. So long that if I looked any longer the flower might have called me rude. My stomach clenched. I lifted out of bed and drifted through the bedroom, creaked open the back swinging door, crossed down the porch steps until my toes felt soft earthy blades. I sat in my white nightgown in front of the rebel flower grown and unearthed it, cautiously. The dirt felt warm in my palms. Air moved gently around my skin and cicada’s buzzed viciously from the tall trees. I smothered the soft grains of soil between my fingers, laid down and pressed the mound against my chest as it melted into me, gentle petals pointing to the sky.
Published in The Varsity Writing Team’s Issue #1
EXCERPT FROM:
THE FUTURE: PART THREE - PINK
We laid on the floor. I told her to leave. She smelled like blue ink. I drew puzzles and mazes with a ballpoint pen all over her body. She looked like a shitty constellation. She was beautiful. I liked her.
He pulled out a small silver case, and clicked the sides open. Four bottles of sunshine pills. I looked up into the corner of the room. He readied a syringe and extracted my blood, placing the vial into another silver case. He filled a second syringe with an iridescent ivory serum, like liquid hand soap and melted pearls, and injected it into my other arm. My eyes blurred. Not with tears. With some sort of goo. I shook a little.
“We want you to come back, Maves.” He looked into my eyes. “Come back to the city. Let me cure you there.”
“I don’t want to go back.”
He paused. And clicked together his silver cases. “It’s the last dose I could bring. If you think this is a natural choice. So be it.”
He swiftly turned and exited out the door. I crawled to my bed and laid there. Motionless. I didn’t lock the padlocks. Or nail up the boards. What was the point. There wasn’t.
