
THE C WORD by Chloe Alberta
If I could only stay kind and beautiful, I, too, could survive on the happiness contained in a single shot of frat boy whiskey. But I always had trouble with kindness.
If I could only stay kind and beautiful, I, too, could survive on the happiness contained in a single shot of frat boy whiskey. But I always had trouble with kindness.
“They don’t feel anything, do they?” she says. He smiles at her. His smile says, who cares if they do.
He knows without a shadow of a doubt that he cannot die. It makes him reckless in a way everyone loves, except for Steve-O.
Mosi is Sprite, Banji is Coca Cola. Whoever loses, does the rounds to check for hippos that might have strayed too far.
The music lifted like a cosmic prayer. Then the collective scream: the squawk, the beef and bleat of the slaughter, a rumbling dusk arcing across the auditorium.
I’m about to reverse out when I think–drunk kid. In my car. And I’m drunk. Maybe a bad idea.
But there are two kinds of shame: the kind that you cannot speak the words to, even in your head, and the kind you can’t stop talking about. I told the story for years.
The crack widened at last and cleaved the porch in two. The tree had effected a crack that, the men saw, was surprisingly neat. The work of the devil, said Fred.
No one had spoken up for me. Not a single soul on my street told the officers they had the wrong idea, that I was a pillar of the community.
He lunges into the dirty can and takes the cat by the scruff. It hisses and scratches his hands until blood drops fall from his hands.