Blog Archives

Black Alice II: 3) Babysitting Duty

February 9, 2012
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Ambassador Bridge by Detroit Unspun on Flickr

Ever have that dream where you’re falling, and suddenly you wake up? Try it in reverse, sometime. I woke up, stumbling over my own feet and falling. There was a small, strong hand on my right arm that almost caught me as I went down, but I'd twitched when I came to and had surprised her. My left hand was still frozen fast to my throat, so I had no way to catch myself. I went down hard, grunting as my knee ran hotly along a thick pile carpet. The side of my head hit the floor pretty hard, but I...

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Black Alice II: Interlude One

January 26, 2012
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Black Alice II: Interlude One

The thing about sharing head space with the shadow is that she never stops. She doesn’t do anything that even resembles sleep. She doesn’t even do anything like rest. She’s in constant motion, like a shark swimming round and round so it doesn’t die. Which means I don’t ever stop, either. I haven’t actually slept since I was a little girl, in the hospital after the storm that vomited me up onto that beach in Galveston. Even then, I wasn’t asleep. I was drugged. But we’ll get to that later. When I was young and the shadow and I were new to each...

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Black Alice II: 2) Evacuate the Dance Floor

January 16, 2012
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Black Alice II: 2) Evacuate the Dance Floor

In the background the screaming started. My shadow and I heard the shrill sound leaping from one mouth to the next as panic spread through the crowd like wildfire. It began behind us, where a dead woman was falling to the ground after having had the bad luck to dance between us and the shooter. The other dancers saw the blood, their fallen friend, and started in on turning this party into a riot. Heart rates soared and the air was alive with throbbing music, adrenaline, flashing lights and screams. It was dizzying, feeling the ebb and flow of...

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Black Alice II: 1) Girl’s Night Out (edited)

January 9, 2012
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Black Alice II: 1) Girl’s Night Out (edited)

The music was so loud I could feel it rattling my fillings, a synthesized techno beat with a bass line that shook the floor and vibrated through the walls. Some overly auto-tuned gal was moaning along while colored lights strobed over walls draped in metallic fabric, and out on the dance floor people were gyrating and dry-humping. I sat at our table, glaring into my over-priced, watered-down drink, head pulsing as my shadow writhed in ecstasy. She loved it. The club was deliberately poorly-lit, and the flashing laser light and wildly spinning spotlights made it easy for my shadow to writhe...

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Black Alice II: 6) Honey, I’m Home

December 19, 2011
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Image by Daniel Haaser via Flickr, Creative Commons License, Click to View Source

Climbing into our cab was a relief. The shadow stretched out into the ambient darkness as the cabbie pulled away from the curb, and I felt my shoulders loosen as she spread out, the sensation like exhaling after holding my breath for too long. I actually had a tension headache pinching behind my eyes. She purred in my head at the meager freedom and commenced cataloging the myriad of upsetting tastes and scents ground into the upholstery and footwells.

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