Sticky and gooey smooth oozed down both sides of her shivering cheeks… she ate another gooseberry, then another… Allie’s strength was coming back.
She turned and ran down the beach to gather her clothes… then quickly back up to the top of the berm where she tossed her sandy, wet clothes into the warm, wavy grass to dry… that’s when she saw a huge spotted gray sea bird rapidly descending toward her.
Written by Edward Roads
Allie’s taut, fully hard body found an elasticity in it’s graceful, meandering glide and gooseflesh glisten… and she continued to rub and gently wash away her compounded filth within nature’s vast, salty tub.
As the night kept breathing and thickening clouds morphed into flared nostrils, Allie’s floating thoughts suddenly turned valedictory… she felt a shivery twinge and frantically flailed to get out of the ocean immediately.
Written by Edward Roads
“Sweetheart, I am just trying to show you why we prosper…it’s ok…you’ll remember this and thank me one day beautiful…stop resisting…you stupid… you useless, lazy bitch…like your… wasted…mother…c’mon, your father is talking to you.. “.
Allie opened her knowing, bloodshot eyes, stood straight up in the dank, and walked toward the water.
(Written by Edward Roads)
Thousands of kilometers away, a solitary woman, clad in isle simplicity, felt, smelled, and harvested the opulent vegetation of her self-sustaining fortress in the deadly North Atlantic; known to all, including those no longer with us, as Brigadoon.
Here, Allie, with reddening nose adrip and crusty right arm in need of medical attention, moved inspectively closer to the carved ‘shill d19’ on the massive table… that’s when she became aware of a warm air current blowing on the back of her legs.
(Written by Edward Roads)
Should curious souls be brave enough to approach this very small place, said souls would inevitably fall prey to a petulant portion of the Atlantic that callously reduces any craft to an unpredictable skiff of temerity.
Before their imminent demise was at hand, seafarers might glimpse an overwhelming radiance undulating betwixt the formidable spires…the island’s majestic breath.
(Written by Edward Roads)
In an unflinching formation that featured a hint of pugnacity, spotted sea birds carefully maneuvered above a clandestine, rock-ribbed island located almost twenty miles northwest of Skellig Michael.
Lost amid the ferocity of a continuously raging ocean and unknown to even the most detailed nautical charts, decades of maritime vox populi commonly dismiss the tiny island as an eerie myth.
(Written by Edward Roads)
Shill, the loyal man who worked this seaside immigration seat for more than 30 years as part of what you might call a welcoming committee, looked at yet another girl, with another story, with another…
“Hi, my name is Allie… I just got off that rickety damned boat and I need someone to show me a quiet place where I can think.”
(Photo: Edward Roads)
Written by Edward Roads
Allie, who hadn’t known a blip of happiness in more than 6 years, crept towards the poorly shaved attendant that was seated and staring at all of the new arrivals.
She walked up to a monstrous, scarred oak table, slammed her soft left hand down on dirt and despair, and figured she’d ask what she needed to do to be a citizen. {my God, I just don’t know, was that what I needed to do}
(Photo: Edward Roads)
Written by Edward Roads
With eyes closed and a slightly slumped lean, Gia’s furrowed hands became a simple brace on the kin marble of her second floor kitchen counter.
She thought of her late father, his devotion to that blasted quarry, and his strange fondness for a rosebush, that seemed to bloom every damn year on their parched Italian countryside.
Photo: Edward Roads
Written by Edward Roads
She never listened to anyone, including her till death do us part dear friend Romo, who packed his 77 brown Nova and left for the sweet air confines of Northern Maine to escape her gripping disease.
It had been one time too many, something she wouldn’t understand, no matter how many times he told her, until she helplessly woke the following morning.
Photo: Edward Roads
Written by Edward Roads
During the battering storm, Anna and Sadie were playing, truthfully tossing, a 99 cent Wal-Mart ball back and forth on a small splotch of saturated lawn in front of their parents coastal home.
A quarter of a mile beyond the splash zone, an old wood-stapled pub opened on time with a below average drummer setting up his cymbals on a small smoke-beaten stage.
Photo: Michael Roads
Written by Edward Roads
Everlong friends, sipping rectory found tea at bible study on Tuesday night, reminding her that peacefulness is driven by an inner majesty that blocks the pain.
In the end, cold Bristol snow flurries gave way to an alert 87 year old that had seen a thing or two, maybe three; wanting to shake hands with anyone who had the compunction to see her as something more than a small dot on an equally small map.
Photo by Edward Roads
Written by Edward Roads
(Continued from Mytwosentences 168)
The walk toward the cab was slow, actually umbrella in the wind discombobulated, but Preston pressed on with eyes wide.
The clomp of his backward progress seemed similar to that of Frankenstein’s monster in a cool movie he watched only yesterday…then he saw the thing that would change his life.
Written by Edward Roads
(Continued from Mytwosentences 167)
After looking up at a rolling quilt of a sky, he immediately took off toward the annoying and unexplained sounds of his new backyard.
As Preston ran upon the matted and long dead grass of his side lawn, he caught something unsettling out of the corner of his eye… the taxi that dropped him off was just sitting there.
Written by Edward Roads
(Continued from Mytwosentences 162)
Preston moved mummy-like, shock was turning his already sketchy palate to a slightly chewy dust, toward the vacant spot where unmet Mick wasn’t.
As he knelt near the lush green of his missing next door neighbor’s perfectly manicured lawn, another sound, what was this three or four now, boomed from his yet unseen backyard.
Written by Edward Roads
Mytwosentences 