The issue consists of 25 complete stories, each 25 words long, told in 5 sentences, with each sentence comprised of 5 words. One of the stories, The Stake, is mine.

I like the idea a lot. 5×5 format is quite strict and it is a real challenge to make the final piece work as a complete story. Great idea, Angel!
Check it out here.

Maybe they are in the cellar? We moved to our new house recently and I am not sure which moving boxes are my husband’s and which may be Mr Teenage Vampire’s. So many are still unpacked.

Should I go to the cellar and make the sign of the cross or something on all the boxes? Does it count if I am an atheist? I mean, I CAN draw a cross, in spite of being an atheist; drawing a cross is not beneath me. Cross is a nice symbol and I like to draw. But, there are many different crosses. Which one is the best against vampires? Especially – teenage vampires?

Oh, my head hurts and burns. I have a fever.

My dear teenage vampire reader; you from the cellar; you that I suspect are sitting down in one of your boxes with the new MacBook Air and using my wireless network to surf for vampire porn and read everything I write; if you get pissed off with me and come here to bite me, I hope that you too will get fever and start burning from the inside (I suspect I have a swine flu, and everyone says that is bad). Ha! How pathetic would you be then? A teenage vampire burning from the inside with the swine flu. Oh, wait, that would be – heartbreaking. They should make a movie about you. No – you deserve a whole trilogy!

I need paracetamol. And maybe some garlic. And a pen. Which color should that cross have? Is red too provocative? You can never go wrong with black, right?

My head. My head! I have a fever and I want that guy out of my cellar!

One of them is mine: Tonight

The pretty watch is broken, worthless, and the overjoyed bunnies can have it. Happy, happy!

Five o’ clock is standing still and the bubbly bunnies will be clinking their fragile tea-cups forever. Clink! Clink!

The tiny voices are bouncing off the pink clouds of my thoughts. Singing bunnies!

They live inside, my little five o’ clock bunnies, coloring my days. My black days!

Poetry and prose by Quin Browne, Susannah Elisabeth Pabot, Rachel Kalyna, Jelena Vencl Ohlrogge and P.A.Levy.

Photography by Kelly Rae Daugherty. Visit her website at www.kellydaughertyphotography.com

Edited by Walter Conley.

The stones in Daniel’s pockets were far from ordinary, but Margaret kept on referring to them simply as ‘stones’, in spite of their respectable age and origin. Those ‘stones’ were about 4.5 billion years old, as old as the solar system, and they came from above. They were chondrites, stone meteorites.

Although his step seemed light, Daniel was very worried. Doomsday was approaching, and people were not taking it seriously. No one was doing anything about it. Nothing serious, anyway. A lot of lunatics on TV and YouTube and silly articles in newspapers now and then have just diminished the significance of the fact that the world was coming to an end, and humans could not prevent it. Not if they did not start thinking and doing something now. Like – give up on silly wars and cheap entertainment and start solving the real problem. Daniel was talking out loud about his worries for years, but no one would listen. Two years ago he went silent and took action.

Margaret kept on telling Daniel that there was no real evidence to support the doomsday myths about the Mayan calendar that ends on December 21, 2012. She suggested that Mayans were simply wiped out before they could make another calendar. Daniel thought that Margaret herself believed in what she was saying, but that was nevertheless just silly. Anyway, the only subject she really knew a lot about was – shoes.

Margaret owned 84 pairs of shoes and whenever they argued about it, she would say that Imelda Marcos had 2700 pairs of shoes at one point of her life. Daniel did not understand how that mattered, but somehow – it did. Also, Margaret expected him to be happy that her collection count was nowhere close to 2700. Only not yet, he thought, not being happy. No, he was not happy at all.

But, he had his chondrites, and so they lived together, in a 25sqm apartment, with 84 pairs of Margaret’s shoes, a pile of stones under the bed and a few other things as well.

Every day, during lunch hour, Daniel would drop the content of his pockets on people’s heads. He would go to the top of the buildings into which he managed to enter, and drop small meteorites, one by one, on passers-by. The stones were small, but they would hurt upon impact; he saw that most people stopped and felt their heads. Some would even look up, but he was always fast to hide.

Daniel has been meteor-showering people, as he called it, for some time now and he thought that he was quite good at picking his spots and victims. The weapon remained the same, and Daniel would always collect the stones scattered on the pavement after his shower action, trying to stay unnoticed. Daniel had lost a lot of meteorites over the course of time, since he could never find all of them, so he used to purchase new ones monthly, over the Internet.

But, today, Daniel did not have time to do the lunch meteor shower. Margaret called him while he was looking for a suitable building. She wanted them to have a lunch together; she would bring Chinese takeout and meet him in Eastside Park. Daniel was not happy; his lunch breaks were very important to him.

Daniel walked to the central part of the park, and there she was, sitting on a bench. Pretty as a picture, Margaret was framed with an elegant fountain in the background, two takeout boxes in the lap and a plastic bag lying on the bench beside her. Shoes. A new pair of shoes! No… Two pairs of shoes! What was she thinking, were the shoes to be put in the bathtub? Or was he supposed to sleep there, so that she could have all of her beloved shoes in the bed, next to her? There was no free space left in their apartment, no free space at all! Daniel felt that his temperature was rising and his head was about to explode. He saw Margaret moving her lips, but no sound came out.

That was it. He had it. His head exploded and thousands of dark spots spread over his field of vision. For a moment, Daniel thought that those were the pieces of his head, but then he realized that he cannot be headless and think at the same time. No, the dark spots came from elsewhere. The sky opened and black rain started pouring on them. His head hurt, and the pressure was coming from the outside this time. He ran and hugged Margaret, protecting her with his body from the small stones falling from above. They ran towards a big tree that could give them a shelter. Daniel felt something hit his head. The pain came instantly, just before everything got dark and silent.

***

They were sitting under the tree, Margaret sobbing, Daniel resting in her arms. Daniel opened his eyes and touched his head. It still seemed to be in one piece, painful and swollen here and there, but nothing serious. Around them people were lying, crawling, walking over the piles of stones; some were crying. Scratches, a bit of blood and ripped clothes, but no bigger damage was to be seen.

Daniel was something of an expert in meteorites, after all this time of studying and using them. Not so many people had his kind of experience with meteorites; first-hand experience, so to say. He looked around, his eyes trying to absorb as much of the view as possible, his brain trying to understand what did not feel right in this meteorite-painted picture.

No, he was not surprised that the sky opened and the meteorites came down; of all people, he was the one who knew this would happen one day; he tried to raise the awareness; he knew this was just a beginning and that doomsday had been knocking on Earth’s door for some time now.

But, something felt wrong. Was it the shape; was it the texture; was it the grouping of the stones? Was it the whole setup? What in the picture before his eyes was not quite right? His head hurt. He did not know if the pain was caused by the stone shower or by the tension from trying to understand what felt wrong.

And then millions of small stones opened as upon command. Insect-like miniature creatures started pouring out of them, from their small meteorite-shaped space ships; the first ones to come and put their little insect feet on our Earth. Daniel closed his eyes. This was the most amazing lunch hour ever.

I am
black and white,
always right
for you
for anyone.
Manipulated,
interpolated,
made to fit
perfectly.

disenthralled is a journal of art, photography and literature that lie somewhere between contemporary Gothic and Noir.

I am proud to be one of the authors whose pieces are featured at disenthralled. A piece I wrote, Frigid (Kay’s story) is a part of ISSUE #7.

disenthralled, ISSUE #7 : Poetry and prose by Karen Baker, J.S. MacLean, Carrie Clevenger, Kilian Conor, Paula Ray, William Doreski, Roberta Lawson, Tyson Bley, Jelena Vencl Ohlrogge. Photography by Jill Auville. Produced by Walter Conley.

The March issue of Negative Suck is featuring the following authors and artists:

Kenneth Pobo, Ron Androla, KJ Hays, Eileen Escabar, Emily Smith-Miller, Brittany Wallace, Lyn Lifshin (Negative Suck’s first guest author), John C. Mannone, Lynn Kinsey, Lara Konesky, Kristen Shaw, Adam Moorad, and returning author Jelena Vencl Ohlrogge. (Another piece I wrote, “Some Men Talk Too Much”, was published in The Virgin Issue of Negative Suck in December 2009.)

Two of my flash fiction pieces are featured there, one of which is the previously unpublished ‘Metamorphoses‘.

Fiction by Erin Cole, Melanie Browne, Jelena Vencl Ohlrogge, Charlie Coleman and Frank Duffy.

Non-Fiction by Robert Crisman. Paul D Brazill interviews Scottish Award winning journalist & crime writer Tony Black.

Art: Jason Michel talks to Ed Mironiuk and showcases his delectable Pin Ups!

Celluloid: Paul interviews The Guardian’s very own Anne Billson.

Music: Paul takes a trip down memory lane to Liverpool’s punk/post punk scene with Jayne Casey.

And in Mr Brazill’s I DIDN’T SAY THAT, DID I? column, he talks to two notable femme fatales: Carole Parker & Anne Frasier.

You are crying, screaming and howling, but no tears, not a single movement can hatch from your plastic-infused botoxed mask. You look present to an inexperienced passer-by, but you are fading. You are ethereal, transparent and absent; absent as I am from your life and your thoughts; your blank thoughts that could not retain me with any kind of magic superglue or sheer will. I am gone. Gone. I erased myself from everything that had you even close to its existence and now I can stop holding my breath, I can be weak and alone and start healing.

Absolutely Kate gave me The Circle of Friends Award! Thank you, Kate, you are also one of my favorite blogging friends!

Here are my five other favorites:

Doug Mathewson

Jeffrey S. Callico

Jim Wittenberg

j guevara

Peter Strömberg (in Swedish)

Dear Tobias,

You were not at work today. Are you sick again? I suggested that you were abducted by aliens, but others just laughed off the idea.

I hope you are not abducted at all, but, if you are, it would be cool if your abductors were aliens. Cool, of course, if they return you. And I mean – you, the real you, not a clone of yours…

Oh, no… now I am scared! How will I be able to know that you are the real you when I see you again?

IF they return “you” at all…

I was waiting, staring through the window as if the glass wasn’t there.

It was harder to do the same thing with walls. How funny, when you think about it, since both are made of sand. Walls and windows. Like coal and diamonds.

I think I prefer the transparent forms.

He came and turned around. Yes, the shirt was great, and he looked fine. I just wanted us to leave already, but he thought that the shirt did not really feel like The Shirt for The Evening. He needed more time to decide.

I turned and looked outside.

I was getting really good at this; now I could see through the curtain of snowflakes as if they were not there. But, the walls were not giving up yet. Well, I had plenty of time.

Winter landscapes exposed me to you, Graceslayer, to your blood thirst and your favorite toys.

My dead body hangs on your wall and your little town could not be redder today.

But, Lady D says that she is lying in wait for you, Graceslayer.

Lady D says she’ll quake the life out of your retarded being. She says that in my next life I’ll get a toy made of your hide.

But… I do not want the toy. I just want to live again, howl at the moon and run free with my pack, without you in sight.

And you know what, Graceslayer – that is how it shall be; this is your last life, Lady D says. Your soul perished when you sent that bullet through my heart.

Yes, my dead body hangs on your wall today, but I shall be reborn tomorrow, while your days are numbered. Lady D is counting.

There are laws above yours, Graceslayer.

It is the 1st of January and everyone I know is hungover. Children, too. They are sugar hungover.

Yesterday afternoon I witnessed how my friends’ status messages on Facebook and Twitter became less and less comprehensible. Soon I understood that those, usually razor-sharp guys and girls were gone. They were sucked out from behind their screens, bytes and bytes per seconds away from me, and replaced by single-celled organisms entrusted with the task of typing random stuff on and on and on.

I was not coughing yesterday when the transformation started. But now I am. I feel worse every minute, as my friends return back to how they were (or so those fast-multiplying, quick-learning clusters of cells would like me to believe).

More favorites at the NOT, Michael J. Solender’s blog (which, I must add,  he “DESIGNED MOSTLY TO ENTERTAIN HIMSELF”).

Writers as Jim Wittenberg, Michael J Solender, Paul D. Brazill, Robin Stratton and others are featured there.

And, there you can also read a story of mine, ‘Why I Hate Tolstoy‘.

A piece I wrote, Androids Can Be Bored, is playing today At The Bijou!

‘At The Bijou’ is a wonderful site made by Absolutely Kate.

In the most special and very original - only-Kate-can-do-it ways, every Tuesday and Thursday she is presenting chosen authors and their pieces there. Check it out and come back for more!

I am very honoured! : ) Thank you so much, Kate!

got published on Negative Suck in their first, ‘The Virgin Issue’. I am very happy.

negative suck is for writers who don’t suck and who write things that don’t suck.

And one piece I wrote got published there. How cool is that?! Very cool!

Please check out all the ten pieces – flash fiction, poems and art. Neither of them sucks, so to say, and they are hang together quite well.

[Edited : Feb 7, 2010 - the content is moved to a pdf document that can be downloaded here. Click on DECEMBER 2009 : THE VIRGIN ISSUE to download it.

'Some men talk too much' starts like this:

You told me I looked so sweet and naive the first time you laid your eyes on me; I was like a little floating cloud of cream and sugar and strawberries and all that drizzled with honey.

I thought you were a bit poetic, but mostly pathetic when talking.

...]

The Secret got published at Blink|Ink today. I love their selection of microfiction and I am very happy that they also published some of my stories (this is the second one!)

Also, please look around some more when you pay a visit to Blink|Ink Online; the design of the whole site and the featured artists section are amazing.

Wires, belts, needles, whispers, hands, people touching me, holding me, waving pictures before my eyes, photos of boys, handsome boys… oh, yes, I like boys, I have always loved boys… I said – I am just an ordinary gay next door, there’s no woman under my skin, but they kept saying I would be happy, asking rhetorically who wants to be deviant anyway.

AAAAAH TREMBLING AND SHAKING AND CONVULSING AND OH PAIN EXCRUCIATING PAIN AND THEN IT GOT WHITE AND ALL I COULD HEAR WAS MUSIC BYE BYE LOVE, BYE BYE HAPPINESS, HELLO LONELINESS, I THINK I’M GONNA CRY and I cried and cried until my tears quit on me, or – was it Valium that made me not care?

Something was not working as it should, they told me that my deviance was a serious one and here I was lying surrounded by belts, even more needles, scalpels, whispers, hands, people touching me, holding me, no pictures before my eyes this time, but then I got sleepy and did not care much even before they put me on the table; a needle went into my sore veins and seconds later I was getting even calmer. They would cure me for sure and I would be pretty-as-a-girl when I wake up, one step further on my way to the penis-less and breast-full body.

The anesthetic was working, I was fading; all that I could register was the white light following me through what I back then did not know was my last crawl through the corridors of consciences and then the music started again BYE BYE LOVE, BYE BYE SWEET CARESS, HELLO EMPTINESS, I FEEL LIKE I COULD DIE, I FEEL I’M GONNA DIE, I FEEL and then I did not feel anything, anymore, ever again.

…………………………….

The piece I wrote was inspired by the Aversion Project.

A study called ‘The Aversion Project’ found that gay conscripts in the South African Defense Forces (SADF) during the apartheid era, during 1970s and 80s, had been forced to submit to ‘curing’ their homosexuality, both by electroshock therapies and by botched sex changes.

Sex-change operations, medical torture and chemical castration were perpetrated on national servicemen in a bizarre program to cure ‘deviants’ during the apartheid era.

To this day dozens of victims of the program are crippled and disfigured, stranded halfway between male and female by incomplete sex-change operations performed by the South African Defence Force (SADF).

Many more are sterile after being chemically castrated. A number of the victims have committed suicide. Surgeons who served under the SADF confirmed that a number of patients died on the operating table while having their sex changed; the actual causes of their death were never made public.

The quote above is from Newsmakings.com (‘send your son to us and we’ll make a man of him; if that fails, we have Plan B‘). More can be read here and here.

Was it snow or was it rain that was falling on Stockholm this morning? The opinions were divided.

The results of today’s online survey conducted by “Times of Sweden” showed that the majority of those who experienced rain were also pro invasion of Norway, with the main aim of moving the responsibility for giving The Nobel Peace Prize “to Sweden, where it belongs”.

According to the Zero Personal Privacy Law, “Times of Sweden” provided the government with all the IP addresses of the survey participants.

Your obsessive-compulsive survey-filling reporter hopes that she won’t be behind bars the next time you hear from her.

First posted here, in The Skeptic’s Newspaper

My girl came out of the bathroom after not more than half an hour late, but I was fine with that; I had some time to deliver a daily dose of “yes, mom” and “no, mom” on the phone.

In the midst of thinking how lucky I was to be with that gorgeous woman who also had (most of the time) the sweetest personality to match, I noticed an impatient look on my darling’s pretty face; her left brow was twitching (now, maybe that is not a condition that requires medical attention, but I really get scared from looking at it, and being scared often can’t possibly be good for my health…); she had asked something, apparently, and now she was waiting for an answer.

I felt like in a bad dream; my brain paralyzed, stuck in a wrong moment; but still I could hear myself very well when I responded with one firm “yes” just to see those perfectly shaped lips getting distorted with anger while her freckles were disappearing in the sea of red that took over her whole face within seconds.

The love of my life ran back into the bathroom, slamming and locking the door while sobbing and at the same time screaming (at me, evidently): “You… you… happy jerkaversary, you jerk!!!”.

I went to bathroom #4 and saw the clothes tossed all over the floor; the shower was on, steam crawling over the walls; my black and white satin shoes with small quirky bows were getting exposed to the humidity in large amounts; why were they not in their box and what were they doing here?!

The whole search for my shoes started when I could not find them this morning so I went from room to room trying to trace them; and – George.

I was sure he snatched them; I saw how he looked at them yesterday when I had them on when we met him for dinner; but we had a deal – play with whatever you want; you may borrow my hats, my sunglasses, or even dresses as much as you please; but NOT MY SHOES!

George, that prick with wide hairy feet, who kidnapped my shoes, must have had plenty of time to try them on while I was sleeping (a mental note – inspect the shoes for yucky hair traces after you find that lying cross-dresser and pull his ears out) and when I came in he must have just dropped them on the floor and hid in the shower!

George, you coward and thief, you so crossed the limit this time; we will never be staying at your place when we are in Como again; you may try to sweet-talk me, but good luck with that!

I do not care that my hubby is delighted that I am pissed off with someone else (for a change) this early in the morning, and is not likely to support my decision to end our friendship with you; I do not care that your precious arse is naked and no one who does not pay you 25 million dollars or is not intimate with you gets to see it; get out of the shower and explain what you did to my shoes; NOW!

Posted in Flash fiction, Six sentences Tagged: 6S, angry, bathroom, cross-dresser, fiction, Flash fiction, humor, shoes, thief ]]> http://shortstoriesbyjelena.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/not-my-shoes-bad-bad-george/feed/ 1 Jelena BlackWhiteShoes4 http://shortstoriesbyjelena.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/well-always-have-our-poems/ http://shortstoriesbyjelena.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/well-always-have-our-poems/#comments Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:22:10 +0000 Jelena http://shortstoriesbyjelena.wordpress.com/?p=221 ]]> Darling, my saccharine darling; the short-lived euphoria I felt when we met extruded a poem or two that weakened your knees and made you vertiginous; we spent a few days waking up together and now you are in love.

Please don’t keep on saying you love me; that poor statement is so… abused.

Oh no, you furious lady, now you say you hate me; but, hate is so… impolite.

I never said I loved you, did I?

Even if I did, my dear naivetess… if you ever dare trust a poet – do not stop reading his work.

If you paid more attention, you would have known that I left you about two poems ago, my September darling; left you for good.

Just before you die, all the sediments of pain raise and morph into a whirlwind which only intent is to leave you. That separation hurts even more than harboring the anguish, but this time I endure. After the agony of the detachment is over, the pain is gone.

If I could feel, I would rejoice. But, I can not; I am gone, too.

“Why are you black?”

“Wow, that’s a good question; well, my mom was black and my dad was black; I guess that is why I turned out black, too…”

“I like you.”

A lady came nearly running all the way from the other side of the hotel lobby, murmured something even she herself did not understand, and then started dragging her daughter away from the tall guy who was waving back to the little girl whose eyes were turning into waterfalls.

I talk a lot and I am not used to people actually listening, but you do; and I usually feel so lonely but no, not now when I am with you, isn’t that amazing?

No, I have no friends or family, no, I have no one; there are seldom days when I do not feel like the most miserable person on Earth, and here you came, being so kind and talking to me with such a genuine warmth in your voice.

Why are we stopping in the middle of the forest, did something break?

Is that a gun in your hand?

But, you said I was perfect…

I do not know what to do with those; should I post them both there and here? It feels redundant and unnecessary. Still, one can not comment on them if one is not a member of 6S. Hm, hm. Maybe I should post them here, after all?

For now, I will update the links to the stories as I write more. Today I posted two of them, Departure and We’ll always have our poems

EDITED on 2009/09/28 :

I will post my short stories from 6S here as well. For my own sake. I tend to lose pieces I’ve written, so I will try to gather the most of them here. I’ll tag those with 6S.

It was early in the morning and I was in the bathroom getting ready for work. I washed my face and was about to put the towel back on the hook, when somehow I managed to turn my head in a previously unexplored direction. My silly move was immediately punished with an excruciating “I see stars” pain before everything became silent and turned black.

An indefinite amount of time later the darkness started fading, and the stars were gone, but – my nose hurt like hell, I was on the floor and apparently I was bleeding. Ice pack, some paracetamol… my nose bled and bled, but it did not seem to be broken. In the days to come I experienced some bruising and swelling, but nothing really dramatic. Except that I started wondering… how big is my nose, really?

The mystery

Think for a second – how big a nose must one have in order to hit a wall without any intention, or previous calculations and careful planning; rather just by turning their head? I had to know!

I went through the pile of girly magazines a friend brought me last month. I googled. I went to the library (there I spent most of the time sneezing loudly. How loudly? Well, very much like my-nose-is-large loudly!). I went back home and took out all of my photo albums and CDs with pictures of me. Looking, analyzing, reading…

A surgery or a self-help book shelf?

This world is a nasty place. All the possible reading I found could be roughly divided into two categories; the first about plastic surgeries and how you should look, which surgeon and nose shape you should choose (picking your favorite celebrity and finding the guy who did her nose to fix yours as well is supposedly a good way to get what you are aiming for) and what to avoid and blah blah…

The other category was about women who believe they look unattractive because of their supposedly big and ugly noses (often the noses are the bad parts, but sometimes the breasts are too small, or the bottom is too big, or…), but according to the articles, those women are just lacking self confidence and should work on that instead. You know, the usual blah blah.

I belong nowhere

And what about my case?! There must be plenty of other women that go through life blissfully unaware of their Cyrano De Bergerac noses, believing that they look cute, miniature and adorable like Claudia Schiffer in their midface region, yet they don’t! We don’t!

Apparently the world does not care. If we have no issues with our looks, and have no intention to operate us, no one cares that we go around and hit walls with our trunks, in spite of being in good health otherwise and having no problems with balance. No one writes about us; the invisible, the ignorant, “I am looking good” not-really-good-looking people.

Bad self confidence can be profited on, and the world cares about profit. Who can profit on me? Wall repairing people? No, I could not damage a wall with my nose even if I tried. Ice producing companies? There are no such. Pharmaceutical companies? Paracetamol is cheaper than plastic surgery.

Living on the edge

In my case rhinoplasty would probably be a necessity, not a vanity thing, since I have an increased risk of a head injury because of the unfortunate geometry of my face. Still, I think I’ll just pass on that one.

I am quite content as I am; a brave lady who lives a risky life on the edge of the beauty and occasional stars seeing; yet – in a seldom disturbed peace with her beloved trunk.

I do not even need a support group. I do not need self-help books. I do not need to save for surgery. All I need is some ice in the freezer and an OTC painkiller in the drawer.

At first I had none. No “coffee sense” or anything connected to it, existed in my head.

Genesis

One day, as my awareness of the external world grew over a certain point, I have noticed a peculiar thing. They called it “coffee”.

Coffee was embodied in mini black holes of a specific smell that grown ups gravitated towards in their daily get-togethers.

Upon a closer inspection I have noticed that coffee was a blackish liquid with brown foam on top. They used to drink it from small cups – that previously established source of the strong gravitational force.

Grown ups; a mysterious drink; conversations that were either boring or non-understandable; the whole happening often enveloped in clouds of smoke… I was suspecting that all those coffee drinkers were actually members of a sect. Therefore I decided to stay away from coffee.

That was the beginning. My coffee sense hatched from those feelings and impressions. There it was; a virtual one-state cell, with no developed receptors.

Teenage years – The Turkish Phase

I always thought myself to be flexible when it comes to changing my mind; whatever is carved in stone can be evened out and carved deeper… if all that carving is really needed.

I was 15 and being cool was my imperative. It took some years to accept that I am not all that hunky-dory, and, weirdly enough, somewhere along that road all those ideas of where the coolness can be found simply disappeared. But back then it seemed necessary to smoke and drink coffee in order to be less of a loser. So I decided that I was a smoker and a coffee drinker.

It tasted indescribably bad! I hated coffee and cigarettes made me sick, but I won over my annoyance and soon enough I was smoking like a chimney and drinking coffee until there was no coffee left to drink. A bit of bad taste in my mouth would not stop me on the ultimate way to coolness.

The black liquid was bitter and sometimes quite acidic, but really tough, non-loser types drunk it without milk or sugar. I tried it, secretly, alone, and it tasted even worse with sugar, but it became a bit more tolerable with some milk added. Milk in coffee seemed to be my thing, but how nonconformist was that?! No. Black was good. Milk was for wussies.

We drunk coffee, strong, Turkish coffee, and “read” from the cups after we drunk it. After Turkish coffee is drunk, the sediment at the bottom is left behind. We would cover the cup with its saucer and turn it upside-down. Pictures of symbols, animals, etc would form inside. We did not really believe “the readings”, but it was so good to learn that all of our heartaches would be cured, that we would get good marks in school and, also, that we would soon be dominating the world.

My life has been sometimes kind to me, sometimes not, but my Turkish coffee cups were always very generous. They anticipated many boyfriends who adored me, new pairs of shoes, achievements, plenty of luck, wonderful travels – that it would make for at least ten amazing lifetimes.

MUAHAHAHA

(an evil laughter of an unknown coffee sect leader, laughing at me, since I became one of Them)

I was so in. I became a member of the coffee drinkers sect. Actually, as I changed my perspective; there was no sect. There was belonging to a group, there was a sparkle on my aura made of sheer coolness, there were hopes, dreams, fun, cigarette smoke and card playing.

My single coffee sense cell has developed and multiplied. Those new cells emitted bitterness dampeners and pleasure enhancers upon consumption of coffee. Those cells converted coffee liquid to pure endorphins. And that was the exact point at which I wish they stopped evolving.

Further evolution – Mr. Right and filter coffee

During the course of years, I moved through countries where people mostly consumed filter coffee, and smoked seldom. Not having many fellow sect members around, I have already cut my smoking in half, then in third, without really noticing. I finally quit smoking shortly after I had met Mr. Right. That made his life substantially less miserable, and mine – less smoky. The guy who turned out to be The One for me finally came out of those coffee cups!

Surprisingly enough, my Mr. Right drunk only tea, never coffee. He hated smoking and he had never even tried Turkish coffee. Besides tea, he also quite liked me, and we started living together happily ever after. Mr. Right has been drinking tea in the afternoons, while I drunk instant coffee with cold milk added. Why instant coffee? That seemed like the least bad option at a time, of all the readily availably ones. The worst one was, and still is – filter coffee.

Filter coffee. Bad. Looking like dirty water, and smelling not so fresh even when freshly made. You may think differently if you have never tried something else, meaning that filter coffee is the best and worst and the freshest smelling coffee you’ve ever been drinking. Too weak, too tasteless, and too diluted, I say.

During the filter coffee phase all my endorphins were generated mostly from socializing with Mr. Right and consuming significant amounts of chocolate. My coffee sense cells’ receptors were twitching in disgust from filter coffee, yet they extracted what I needed as much as they could from it, while being as enthusiastic as rowing slaves on a Roman galley.

Plastic

The whole feel-good package containing Turkish coffee had vanished from my life, and the dirty looking, wrongly smelling, filtered substitutes crawled in it instead.

I still drank the substitute since it was better than instant coffee from coffee machines. I drunk those coffee machines spit outs as well, when I had nothing else available. They would come out containing some previously pulverized milk preserved with who knows which chemicals that probably killed a bunch of poor lab rats, but which allegedly were harmless, even good for me. My stomach did not understand all that goodness and hurt me every time as a punishment for swallowing the dreadful mix.

Mr. Right saw my suffering and although not understanding this coffee obsession I obviously had, he was trying to make me happy. He was bringing me small presents whenever he would come from the supermarket – different pre-made ice coffees, packed in plastic cups. I really liked some of those. But all that plastic was bad for the environment, the genuine freshly made coffee smell was not really there, and with my coffee consumption levels, beside an extra job, we would also need a new, bigger fridge, or more frequent visits to the supermarket. We decided to take the plunge and buy an espresso making machine. And so we did.

Deus ex machina

It sits prettily on our kitchen counter, that elegant and no nonsense German device which helped me overcome great difficulties of coping with the ending of my Turkish coffee sense phase.

A press on the button and I have it, freshly milled, heavenly smelling, as strong or as weak I like it, a cup of really good Italian espresso that I can pimp up with some cream, with cold or foamed warm milk, add some cinnamon and other spices on the top of it… it is lovely.

My coffee sense has reached the level of development corresponding to the one of sharks. Basically, it is as good as it gets, and its evolution is so slow at this point that it is undetectable. I like to press the button now and then, and consume my freshly generated espresso with a shot of cold milk. It is good and satisfying.

I have tried to drink Turkish coffee again recently, and it tastes nothing like I remember. Memories are deceiving – often they consist of our emotions only, after all the facts have evaporated. Also, I guess that my coffee sense cells have changed for good and their receptors are not backwards compatible. An evolution is seldom something more than a network of one way streets, mostly blind ones.

Funnily enough, I have managed to escape a sad destiny of hitting the dead end, and my story has a happy ending in the shape of a shiny button I can hit instead; whenever I wish.

Click!

- I am not visible.
- You do not have to be visible in order to be real.

- I was visible recently. Now, when I look at you, I am not. I have changed.
- Do you think the change was from “real” to “unreal”?

- You tell me. I can not see my own reflection in you. How’s that for “being real”?!
- Hmmm, have you ever heard of vampires?

- What?! There are no vampires!
- No, you are right, I was joking. A poor attempt, sorry.

- What should I do?! I want to see my reflection again!
- Do not worry, it will be okay when we slow down. We are moving at the speed of light and you are holding me in front of you.

- But, Einstein proved… and Galileo…
- Do not forget that is just science, not mathematics; it is not absolute. Those are only theories waiting to be replaced by better ones.

- And what is the absolute truth? I want to know the reason I can not see my own reflection!
- What do I know, I am just a mirror. Yet, I can think of a few possibilities. Maybe Einstein was wrong (after he was right, at first, before he changed his mind). Or – I am a mirror with a will of its own and I suffer from caligynephobia.

- There are no special, in your case – blabbing and annoying, mirrors!
- As someone said – everything is relative. But, I was not done – yet another possibility is that you may need a doctor – an ophthalmologist or a shrink. Or – isn’t it maybe so that you are dreaming all of this?

- Oh, I give up! I do not care whether I am real! Just do me a favor and stop answering back.
- Come on, I expected more from you!

- Ha, I knew it – you ARE a mirror with a will of its own! If you were not, you would stop talking when I asked you to, since you would be a part of my dream and subconscience and had to obey me!
- Oh, no, you got it all wrong. Except for the part that you are a woman. A beautiful one, yes, but, nevertheless – a woman – with a level of logical thinking ability that goes with it…

***

- Darling, you were screaming in your sleep. No, that is not what woke me up. You smashed yet another mirror while sleepwalking.

I heard the buzz coming from the people sitting in a small café on the beach and shouts of children in the background. They were there, cut and pasted from another time, another place. They did not see us, in spite of the train of my dress covering about one-third of the pier, coloring it red. We were there in our own invisible bubble, more real for us than reality itself was; non existing for others.

Rhinestone pins were holding my auburn locks together. Your fingers, warmed by salty sun rays, ran through my hair. I could smell their scent. You whispered you loved me. My heart trembled.

I do not know how I came there that day, to the sunny black hole of our lives which interlaced over and over again. I recognized the dress I was wearing. It was a blood-colored silk gown, modeled after a snow-white dress my Barbie doll had when I was a little girl. I recognized the pier, the sea, the scents. Ghosts from the past.

The colors changed when I was brought here. That morning I wore an ivory silk gown, one of a kind, and my hair was blond. The sea was disturbed, cold and gray, and it rained back there. The surrounding people were cut and pasted from some other backgrounds to my day.

My heart was calm and lukewarm lately, it did not boil and ache like it did here, in our sunny black hole, on the pier. It has never healed, but it has cooled down and was surviving just fine for years, tended by a non-disturbing environment; the environment without your presence. But you had to bring me here today, didn’t you?

I will meet you again, I promise. But, please, let me go back from the pier now. The sun is burning my shoulders and I am getting freckles.

Please, let me go. The paper cut on my heart opened wide.

Let me go back, my love. It is my wedding day. The other cut and paste people are waiting, and I am running late.

Her cheek on my hand feels light as a feather. Her body is warm and dry like a good summer day. All the hugs and kisses stained her with my perfume; she smells so sweet. The scent feels different and even better on her than the pure concentrate from the bottle.

I kiss her perfect little forehead and she makes a small sound while dreaming of her past and future killings.

My little angel kills with her innocence unharmed. No, she never regrets it. Still, she always gets confused in front of Death. She does not understand. Where did Life go?

I struggle hard to ignore all the killings, I do not want to think of them. I love her as she is, my little furry darling angel. My little accidental murderer.

“Of course you do. Anyway, you should not be alone all day long, every day. You must feel lonely.”
“I am not lonely. I am not alone either, God is often with me.”

“Often?”
“He is always with me. But he talks to me often, I meant that.”

“Did you mention to your doctor that God talks to you?”
“No, why should I?”

“Well, I may be wrong, but if there is no God, and you hear voices, that could be a sign of some chemical imbalance. Maybe you need a medication to help you with that.”
“Ha ha, you need help. You are the one who never hears God. Why do you think that is?”

“Because there is no God.”
“Or because you have been a bad girl and God is upset with you.”

“Right, or – that. And why do you say “He”? Even if there was a God, it may be female. Or sexless. Or hermaphrodite. Or who knows…”
“You are so silly. It is clear from his voice he is male. He has such a warm, deep, manly voice.”

“Actually, most people who hear voices in their head hear male voices. That is because, beside other reasons, it is easier for our brains to replicate male voices; they are of a less complexity.”
“Blah, blah. Complexity, replication, schmention… or, simply and truly – God is male.”

“Oh, whatever. Please, talk to some doctor about it.”
“And you talk to someone about why God ignores you. And stop projecting your own problems on me.”

Take a deep breath and keep your eyes wide open. You knew the truth all this time, yet you refused to believe in it.

You stood there for some time and stared without blinking, Joe. They were approaching, all of them. They were coming closer and closer while the smoke caressed my body, attempting to hide me from them.

My bones were heated to stay warm for all the ice ages to come, and you, my love, you were the only one who did not whisper God’s name and make the sign of the cross over your heart, horrified after I broke into laughter. You were the only one who dared to come close to the stake and spit on the witch from The North. Did they praise your courage in the years that followed, my darling? I am laughing again, Joe… but, tell me, did you spit in an attempt to extinguish the fire, or because you hated me for leaving you?

I am being honest, Joe. I admit – I left you. It sounds like a fairytale – you loved me because I put a spell on you, while I did not care. But, when I fell in love with you, Joe… you are the only one who knows how I can love.

I brought you back to life and broke the spell. You could have left, but you stayed, Joe… and I, I came back. Eight hundred years later, I still love you.

The Blue Fairy silently glided from a cloud and came to Max from behind. She tenderly touched his head. Max got so scared when he felt her touch that he dropped the shovel, jumped aside and yelled.

“Now now, dear kitty”, said the fairy, “do you know that this is a children’s playing sandbox? You should not try to do what you kitties usually do in sandboxes!”

“Eeew? Who are you and what are you saying!?”

“Oh, I am sorry, so impolite of me… Let me present myself – I am The Blue Fairy from The Dream Fairies Cloud City, and I guard children’s sandboxes while the little ones are asleep.”

“A fairy!? I thought your kind was not real, that you existed only in stories for children! “

“Oh, I see. But, I am real, I promise.”

“But, wait, you do not look like a fairy should, you know – like a pretty lady in a long gown and everything that goes with it…”

“Really? How do I look?”

“To me you look like a small cloud of silvery dust, that, surprisingly enough, talks!”

The Blue Fairy giggled: “That is so funny! I had no idea that you cats see me that way!”

“Why do you keep addressing me as a cat?!”

“Because you are a cat!”

“No, I am not a cat! I am human! I am a grown up and I am trying to repair my son’s sand castles that rain had almost ruined!”

The Blue Fairy and Max were staring at each other’s direction in silence, wondering; a tiny cloud of vibrating dust and a white cat; a slender, pale lady with long brown hair and a blue-eyed guy in his thirties, with sand in his hair and on his hands.