By Rik Brown

The air crackles with a palpable tension. She feels like she could conceivably clasp the tension and fashion it into a shape. Her thoughts meander loosely to the many shapes she was capable of crafting. Always so fond of the octagon. She could make a herd of eight sided shapes. Line them up. Her very own flocktagon. Flock. Funny word that. She turns it over and over in her mind like a linguistic pancake. How she loved pancakes. Though she actually only loved the first three. Then she merely liked the fourth and fifth. She usually regretted the sixth and rarely if ever went to the seventh. Though seven was her lucky number. She had seven fish. She tried to name them after the Dwarves but had got all her stories confused, resulting in Happy, Bashful, Frodo, Dopey, Sinbad, Hawkeye and Hotlips. Was it going to be hot today? It had felt more tropical of late. Tropical fruit juice always disappointed her. The name promised so much and never delivered. Should she change her name? Bernadette was nice enough but did it suit her? She secretly thought of herself as more of a Francene. Paris was the capital of France. Plaster of Paris. Plaster Cast. Casting aspersions. She goes to the dictionary and looks up ‘Aspersions’. She’d bought that Dictionary at a garage sale last July. The inscription in the front cover read “Dear Llewellyn, Get a Word up Ya, love Jules and Michelle”

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