For when you can't afford silk
“I just got a message about a camp not far from here,” Pierrot looked up from his computer screen. “We could do some damage if we liked.” Collie yawned and looked away from her husband. The image of the chimera was still vivid in her mind, the gray-washed horizon still spattered with rain. She felt […]
Lessie shifts uncomfortably in the metal box that is her home. Metal walls, metal floor, metal ceiling, and a metal knob and pedal in front of her. She must sit with her knees crammed up and press the pedal and turn the knob and watch as money circulates, circulates. The box was supposed to be […]
“You’re a shiftless girl Collie, and make no mistake!” Casanova smiled while delivering the barb. Collie stormed around throwing things this way and that, shaking her blonde curls indignantly. Her white cotton skirt flounced, she wore silk white stockings underneath, and white lace garters sporting tiny white bows. She had a white ribbon snaking through […]
A gray dawn opened clear and fair, the patchwork land spreading out from the window like a picture Collie dropped her stitching and stared hard, watching through the glass as though she could melt it. The glass shivered. Collie swiped at her eyes and stifled a sob that rose up in her throat inadvertently. “I […]
He tugged on his face, a grotesque mask, a mockery of humanity. His pupils dilated, and he breathed out a long, slow breath. It convulsed in the air, not sure yet whether it would dissipate or shimmer. He scratched at his skin, his post-skin, and had an idea of luminescence. It was unreasonable, these people […]
Curling wisps of breath strain against the air, shivering in the chill. While all around the trees hold their breath; solid and alert and still. The grass is brittle and cracks, sharp against my boot. The earth is breathing softly, sleeping and digging in its roots. A hushed slumber fills the air, a lazy bird […]
A blinding white fury, terrible in its beauty. A blanket of innocence laid over a sinful world. Absorbing its darkness. Drinking in its evil. Melting into the nothingness, the ashes of the dust of which we are composed. A rotting, stinking, ephemeral flesh that sags into bones too long for this world. To crumble beneath […]
by Lauren Jackson Louisa May Alcott is a woman of many shades of ink; first coating the page in light drops filled with moral goodness and feminine models, to smearing and staining and blotting the pages with lurid and swashbuckling tales that shed light on an immoral underbelly. The consumption of written works from and […]
by Lauren Jackson Flouncing hoopskirts and frilly pantalettes, stifling perfumes and plush furniture, demure flicks of the hand and dimpling cheeks all embody the infamous Scarlett O’Hara in Margaret Mitchell’s classic novel Gone with the Wind .Scarlett was born into a changing world, wherein the very ground she stood on was shifting beneath her feet. […]
by Lauren Jackson In Emile Zola’s novel Nana, we find that female social mobility is rigid in its birth, yet there are character’s that defy it and create fluidity despite commonly accepted values. It is true that women could ‘marry above themselves’ to gain higher positions, but even these were constricted in relation to their […]