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Debutante

11/29/2015

 
BY GINGER BECK


The oppressive fireball of Delta sun hammered upon me and a select group of southern private school young ladies lying covered in mayonnaise, stale French fries, flour, and an amalgam of food items hardening to stone under the oven of Mississippi high noon. The cracking armor of condiments was rank, but we lay docile on the harsh levee gravel and allowed our “sisters” to gleefully shower us with more. This gesture of solidarity to prove our dedication to the group, to seal our bond as sisters, was the grand finale at the end of a week-long initiation into Sub-Deb, a high school club full of pre-debutants who reveled in finding ways of distinguishing themselves as the most elite amongst the elite. 

The summer after eighth and ninth grades, select girls received invitations to join the pseudo-sorority. Directed by a helpful Big Sister, Little Sisters received daily gifts of candy and trinkets with accompanying lists of humiliating tasks to complete to prove our loyalty and desire to become part of the privileged Sub-Deb. I was merely second-string elite, so my invitation didn’t come until year two. My raggedy 1985 Jeep Cherokee Chief and frequent refusal to follow clothing trends held me back the year before. While normally I bucked what everyone else was doing, I couldn’t help but feel relief when my bid came year two, as most of my close friends had been accepted after eighth grade and I had not.
There was no real reward to being a member, only the reassurance that one had been received by the masses, and no matter how much of an individual I was as a high school freshman, I still didn’t mind the idea of being accepted.

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Three Flash Fictions

11/22/2015

 
BY VICTORIA GRIFFIN

​
Whipped Man


Ingredients:
  • 1 man
  • 1 house
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • lots of sex
  • 1 handful insults
  • 1 drop nagging
  • 2 children
  • large fight (check for bruises)

Time:
50 years (varies by altitude)

Directions:


1. Add man to house, removing his innards (friends, job, money) and setting aside.
​

2. Beat mixture carefully, adding two tablespoons of sugar and a lot of sex. Mixture should begin to firm.​

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Portrait of a Clown

11/15/2015

 
BY JONATHAN LEVY
 

​Waiting backstage on a muddy day at RenFest stood a clown with a painted-on smile. He shifted his weight from one giant shoe to the other and fastened his bulbous red nose. Then he burst onto the wooden stage.

“Make way! I’m coming thr —” Diddles the Clown expertly tripped, flopped, flipped, and rolled, landing on his butt. The audience roared in laughter.

“Looks like somebody could use a pie in the face,” said Brian, the lead clown. The whipped cream swirling to its pointy tip in the aluminum pan sounded like oil frying. The audience stamped in the mud and chanted, “Pie! In! The face! … Pie! In! The face!”

​Diddles pleaded under his breath, “Not again.”



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Close

11/8/2015

 
BY HELIA RETHMANN
​


When her daughter was quite young, but just old enough, and as good looking as she would be, the mother sent her off to a remote but distinguished place – she wanted the best for the child. For a long while, nothing happened. When the daughter came back eventually, she confessed to having been completely ignored. Nobody had touched her, nobody had looked at her, she had been stored in a place with other hopefuls, equally bored, equally disregarded, and finally the lot of them had pooled their subway tokens and come back home.

The mother was disappointed, but glad her daughter was back safe. The child, though, seemed disillusioned.

“You were meant for a more intimate place,” the mother told the daughter. In turn, she sent her off to a few well-regarded intimate places. The first one…the second…the third… What the mother did not wish to imagine, and the child never talked about, were the horrors experienced there: the child was rudely fingered and crudely labeled, and people took turns imprinting their greasy fingers on her innocent form. In the end, they sent her back with a “thanks, but no thanks” note around her neck.



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