Fiction: Or Else

Ogee Smith wasn’t trans; he just came back a girl. It happens all the time. Man in one life, woman in the next, somewhere in between in a third. Sometimes, the cosmic gears get all fuckowack and a body comes back wrong and spends a lifetime adjusting. But not Ogee. Ogee came back a girl, but he really hadn’t made the change yet.

And finding a shrink who understood? Ogee’s parents visited thirteen. When Ogee said, “I need to understand gender expectations because I used to be a boy,” the psychiatrists and psychologists started spouting codes.

So when she was eight, Ogee’s parents took her to a regression therapist. “The problem,” the regressionist said before putting Ogee under, “isn’t gender expectations. It’s that you don’t know who you were, so you can’t know who you are becoming.”

Ogee sat obediently still while the woman lit candles and began the hypnotic induction. But then, long after the child had been placed into what the regressionist called ‘the suggestible state’, Ogee suddenly giggled looked right through the woman. She said, “I’m not the one who’s most confused here. You are.” Then, Ogee turned to her parents and explained, “I am an image of an image of an image of myself, as we all are. This is her first life, poor thing. She’s doing this for others because she thinks she has something of her own back there to find. But there’s nothing really. Don’t worry dear,” Ogee hopped up and patted the therapist’s arm. “After a couple of go-rounds you’ll get a sense, as long as you leave yourself open.”

The little girl turned and walked out. “I think we’d better work this out ourselves,” she said to her parents. If I can remember how I shifted last time, I’m sure things will all start falling into place. Can we stop someplace with a toilet? I’ve got to piss like a racehorse before we get out of town.”

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This week at Trifecta:

Fiction: Criminal Intent

If Sheena, not Benjamin, but if Benjamin, then possibly also Rob.

Archer Bancock ran the scenarios through his head again like it was one of those logic problems he completed to pass the L-SAT. He even had a chart drawn up, but too many things cancelled each other out. He thought he might have found the one O in all those columns of X’s, but he wanted to be sure, so he got out a fresh sheet of paper and started writing.

Certainties:

1) Visa confirms, duplicate card delivered to office while we were in Caymans.

2) Since we got back, card has been used to make several $50 purchases around town.

The fact that Sheena had her own card and had drawn the withdrawals to Archer’s attention didn’t make her innocent. Archer had long since realized that one of the dangers of using your wife for your secretary was that she grew entirely too familiar.

Sheena thought herself entitled to confidential case information, treated his clients like close personal friends, and spent Archer’s money like water. It wouldn’t be at all beyond her to order another card, use it on the sly, then report the theft to baffle him, knowing he wouldn’t cancel the card until he sniffed her out. But she was with him in the Caymans when the card arrived, and Archer arrived at the office before she did upon their return. Thus, he leaned more towards the affable janitor, Benjamin or the IT dope, Rob.

Archer checked his watch. He had twenty minutes before he needed to leave for lunch with his son, Winston. This was the first year Win’s class break failed to coincide with the family trip. This meal would be the first time father and son both had time to see each other in over a month. Still, there was more than enough time to work through this whole conundrum once again.

Benjamin cleaned the office twice while the Bancocks vacationed, each time picking up and straightening the mail that had fallen into a pile inside the door. He had opportunity. And he certainly had a motive. He had been housekeeper to the family that owned the building before it became Bancock Law. But the family moved out of town, and Archer had no need for daily cleaning. Now, a cleaning service employed Benjamin. He said he worked the same hours for half the pay, and this was only one of the buildings on his route.

Another watch check. Still ten minutes before Archer had to leave to be in the campus dining hall by noon. Winston seemed to think Archer ought to take him for a grander reunion, but Archer refused the expense. He told his son, “I used to love eating in this very cafeteria when I was in college.” He was looking forward to the buffet line.

Finally, there was Rob. Archer wished it were practical to hire someone to operate his computers, someone who didn’t try to pad his own pockets with unnecessary expenses. Instead he outsourced, and Rob was simply the least of the evils the service inflicted upon him. This winter, Archer finally gave into Sheena’s whining and Rob’s persistence and allowed a systems upgrade while he was gone. So Rob had a building key for those two critical vacation weeks, as well.

And that brought him back to his chart. If Sheena, not Benjamin, but if Benjamin, possibly also Rob. The chart didn’t answer his questions at all. Nonetheless, Archer thought he knew where his money was going, and he left for lunch whistling softly.

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This week’s Story Dam prompt asked:

Write a piece in which your character catches that dramatic break in the case and is on the verge of putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. Help us solve a classic “who-dunnit” but don’t tell us who it is! Let’s see if we can guess for ourselves in your comments!

So. Who, dear readers, stole the card, and more importantly, why?

Old Friend


Grad school exacerbated my bipolar. I’ve mentioned that before. And it took away my writing completely for four horrible years. And what’s worse was that I felt it going away. I took some creative writing classes and suddenly had nothing at all to say. Each piece was a struggle, and as I finished the final story, I realized that there simply were no more ideas. None at all.

It wasn’t just a matter of writer’s block. Writer’s block implies a hurdle that one can overcome. There was nothing at all in my way. I was still sitting down regularly, trying every trick I knew, and there was just nothing there. I composed graduate essays, scraped by on mostly A’s (but one C), and stared at my keyboard and the empty words I put on the page.

And then I stopped sitting at the keyboard, because it was so depressing. I finished two Master’s degrees, got married, and found a job, though not in that order. And none of those things held any words for me. I experienced those things, truly loved some of them. And yet they were just events. Things to enumerate. And every day, I died some.

And then my daughter was born and I needed medication to get through from hour to hour.  I knew the Zoloft was working when I was sitting struggling to nurse Caroline and suddenly thought of a sentence. In that moment, I understood where the writing had gone, and I began to hope that I could bring it back.

I could not unplug that baby from my tit fast enough.

The story that sentence launched never got finished. I realized halfway through that it sucked and I didn’t feel like revising it, not because I was out of ideas, but because my head was suddenly so brimming full of them that I couldn’t type fast enough. The next month, I started the short story that would ultimately become my novel (it was published last December; my daughter is 8; writing time was scarce for too long).

But I remember sitting there looking at the chunky mess of “The Wallet Murder”, and thinking, even as I realized that the story was a trasher, “Hello old friend. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much.”

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Sorry. Madame Syntax Here. I just wanted to say that one of my biggest pet peeves is people who spell “exacerbated” “exasperated”. That is all.
Wait. You interrupted me for THAT? Would you let me READ already?

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This week, the folks at Write on Edge challenged us to write about friendship in 400 words. I seriously did not expect to go in this direction with that prompt.

Dead Flowers

Dead Flowers

“I should have done the flowers.” Donovan Harcourt stared around the restaurant. At every turn, the vases fairly glowered at him. Bright yellow Gerbera daisies had been paired with orange zinnias and chrysanthemums to clash with the blue tablecloths. Bicolor roses festooned the bridal arch in shades of fuchsia and  burgundy, and his daughter’s bouquet poofed outward with oversized hybrid lilies.

“It’s pretty bad,” Gwen whispered in agreement with her father.

They stood at the back, waiting for the music to change so they could walk down between the tables to the place where the groom waited in an appalling magenta corsage.

“Tell me you didn’t order these,” Donovan pleaded.

“Keep your voice down,” Gwen hissed. “No, of course I didn’t. You were with me when we met the florist. I don’t know what went wrong…yes I do.” Gwen shook herself out. “These are for the wrong wedding. But they were setup before we got here, and it’s a little late to tell Ken’s Mom she should have refused the delivery now.”

“But …that,” Donovan pointed at Gwen’s rounded nosegay. It belonged with a tall bride in a casual wedding. Giving a fat bouquet to his short, plump daughter detracted from her elegance.  Her train was some four feet long, and he would have matched that dress with an arm drape filled with roses and gladiolas. He would have spoken his love in calla lilies, delphiniums, and orchids. These oranges, yellows, and reds were suited to a fall, not a winter affair. They were ruining Gwen’s new dress and making him think of all the wrong things.

“Daddy don’t,” Gwen said. “The flowers are fine.”

But they weren’t. Long after the vows had been spoken, long after the restaurant staff had carried in the long head table to replace the wedding arch and carried it out again to make room for dancing, Donovan was sitting alone, twisting chrysanthemums and thinking of his wife.

Gwen left a group of semi-drunken bridesmaids dancing the electric slide and joined her father. “Daddy,” she said. She took the chrysanthemums out of his hand, and suddenly they were both crying. “I just wanted you to be able to enjoy the wedding. I didn’t want you to have to think about details today,” she said.

He said, “Clara would have flayed that other florist alive for these.”

“Yes,” Gwen agreed. “And then she’d have been in a huff for the whole rest of the night. Mother held onto everything for hours. Everyone knows we wanted it different. Ken’s mother feels terrible for accepting the delivery. There’s nothing we can do to change it now.”

She wasn’t just speaking of these flowers. She was speaking, they were both thinking, of seven years ago, in the attic. Donovan took Gwen to a ballgame, and when they got home, there was a note on the table, “Don’t let Gwen find me.”

But he had failed in this, his wife’s last request, because he panicked and fled up the stairs with Gwen following fast behind him. Without consulting or so much as looking at each other, they had both known where Clara would go, what she would do. Father and daughter threw back the attic door together and found Clara’s blood spattered on the windows, her new pink dress stained irrevocably red, a bouquet of last year’s dead chrysanthemums dried brown and fallen at her feet.

How Donovan hated the chrysanthemums after that. Gwen didn’t seem to mind them, so he let her handle those orders these days, and he made a point to ornament the shop in other ways in the months when they would have been most common. He used zinnias and profusions of dahlias to mask this hatred of the most common fall bloom. Yet here they were halfway through December, interrupting the blue tables with orange. He would have used clusters of pink roses and blue nigella to complement the wedding’s theme.

Gwen repeated, “It can’t be changed, and I can’t let it spoil everything for me.”

Donovan smiled a little, “You’re right, of course,” he said.

Gwen used his pocket handkerchief to dab her smeared make-up and returned to her guests. As she walked away, the lights caught her hair, and Donovan realized she had tucked the chrysanthemums behind her ear while they were talking. She had not chosen the flowers, but she loved them. She had detached the four foot train, so now the dress bobbed along at her ankles as she kicked up her right leg to join the electric slide at a pivot. There she was, his daughter, married, laughing, and suddenly Donovan wanted nothing more than to dance with her dancing with all her friends. He got up and made his way along in her wake, the sight of her sliding and stepping rendering the flowers inconsequential.

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For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Kat challenged me with “Write a story about fatherhood with a florist as the main character and a new dress as the key object. Set your story in a restaurant. ” and I challenged ChrisWhiteWrites with “Write a story based on this sentence (which doesn’t have to appear itself in the final version): Now that he was an old man of thirteen, Stephen dressed like his father used to dress, drank coffee in the morning and spoke strongly to his sisters if they acted up.”

Blurry

It’s just an old grain elevator.

But at the right angle, blurry  behind the trees, it might be a castle,

the winter-dead trees the entrance to some forbidden forest,

 

the rusting hulk of a barge the last vestige of a sunken navy

 

the hidden railroad bridge a lowered drawbridge

 

whose struts become the scaffolding upon the battlements

 

above a river that leads to  a long forgotten realm,

 

a place where fantasies are born.

 

And also nightmares.

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I shot these pictures along the Rails to Trails Riverwalk in Columbus, Georgia this past January (2012), and I posted them in early February. Today, I’m linkinking up to the SITS Girls Pinterest challenge and to the instructor’s Pinterest Page (Courtney at Click It Up A Notch). Enjoy!

When The Boys Come Home

And, for the curious, here is the original version 🙂

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This weekend, Trifextra launched a new feature and challenged us to write a love story in 33 words. I decided to manipulate historical images of telegrams and train tickets to give my words some context. I’ll be interested to see if this makes  sense or if this one really needed more than 33 words.

Take Two: Without the train tickets to leave more room for words on the telegrams.

Friday Fluff: January 27, 2012

OK folks, it’s time for another edition of Friday Fluff, where grown-ups fill out questionnaires written by misspelling grammar-ignoring teens. This one taken from here: and written by someone named LoLgUrLiE.

Before I get started, I’d just like to take a moment to discuss that username. You might suggest that someone with a handle like Jester Queen might want to shut her yap about what others decide to call themselves. If so, I would suggest that you shut the fuck up. Now. Let’s parse this out: LoLgUrLiE. I’m going to add spacing to make this a bit easier. LoL g Ur LiE or LOL gUrLiE. NOW do you see what I see? Yes, that’s right. It’s a TRUTH Quiz by Laughing Out Loud Gee You Are Lie. Or possibly Laughing Out Loud Girlie. In either case, LoLgUrLiE clearly doesn’t spell much or grammar often. That said, I detect only one outright misspelling in the bit of fluff below. Points.

Now, ON TO THE QUIZ:

30 Tell The Truth Questions Survey

Do you have a crush right now?
No, but I used to LOVE Orange Crush. So much so, that when Scott and I first started dating, we would exchange these silly e-mails. In one, I wrote “I have a crush on you.” He replied “Grape?” and I shot back “Orange” without even thinking about it.

What is your favorite color?
Asked and answered

What about your favorite animal?
Kittehs

Choose one … 😉 =) >:D :-{D
MASH or MARSH?

Did you ever have an F on your report card?
Grade school, yes.
Undergrad, no.
And I got a C in Grad School, which is the same thing as an F, only without the stigma of actual failure attached to it.

What about straight A’s
4.0 for most of my undergrad.

If you could go back in time and change one thing that you did, what would it be?
Go read Desmond Warzel’s Wikihistory. Go on.

Now ask me that again COWBOY. (or Gurlie)

Do you enjoy singing?
Very much

If so, has anyone ever told you that you can sing well?
Yes, but I’m very self conscious about it, possibly because I grew up with a singer parent.

Again…Choose one…<> , * , @(^_^)@
OK, right. MARSH. Now, I’m going to need the names of five boys you know, four numbers between 1 and 10, three jobs [no Lisa, you may not list ‘hand’. I mean jobs like careers], and eight emoticons. Then, I’m going to draw this spiral … no peeking … and you tell me when to stop.

Are you listening to music right now?
No. But good idea.

If so, what song are you listening to?
I just said “no”.

If not, what song do you WANT to be listening to?
Travelling WIlburys “End of the Line”

What is your favorite subject in school?
I am no longer a student. But I teach college English. So I’ll give you one guess.

What is the month of your birthday?
This sentence is in what I call the extreme passive voice. Instead of just going for a standard passive voice with “What month is your birthday?” you have opted for a form of “to be” and an “of” clause. Extreme. I’m sorry, what was the question again?

Do you like country music?
Some, especially bluegrass, Johnny Cash, Roseanne Cash, and Emmylou Harris.

What about rock?
I breathe rock. (That’s yes.)

….rap?
“…” What an interesting way to avoid ditto marks. What an unusual way to dodge the implied subject and just write “Rap?”. And not as much as the other two, but some.

If you had to eat one fruit for a month straight…what would it be? oranges, bananas, grapes, apples, or kiwi? (or other)
Did you just raid your mother’s fruit cabinet to ask that question? “Gee, what’s Mom got on hand. Let’s see. OK, that’s what I’ll put in the quiz, but I’ll throw in kiwi to make it look all creative and stuff.”
Blueberries.

Do you like roses or tulips better?
Blueberries

QUICK THINK OF A NAME!!!
Galadriel

Was the name that you just thought of a member of your family?
No, but I wish she was. She would give some kickass holiday gifts.
“Mom, check out this phial Auntie Galadriel gave me!”
“That’s nice dear, as long as it was the real Auntie Galadriel and not the one played by Kate Winslet.”

What about a close friend?
Nope.

Ok…what about your crush?
I already told you. My Crush is Orange, and I haven’t had any for ages.

Do you watch SpongeBob?
Eh. Rarely. Sam likes it. Caroline is terrified of Patrick. And I prefer it oh so much to that fucked up Phineas and Ferb.

What is the name of your best friend?
Scott
But. In the spirit of the question, I’ll give you the names of my best friends I don’t have sex with.
I used to have three: Jenny, Genie, and Rachel.
Now I have four: Jenny, Genie, Rachel, and Linda

Do you like fish or chicken more?
Depends on the variety of fish, but usually fish.

Are you a vegatarian?
No. And I’m not a vegetarian either.

What about your steak…Rare, Medium, or Well done (for me … well done :P)
Still Mooing. But. Let’s assume I had answered “Yes” to the vegetarian question above (assuming a vegatarian eats the same things as a vegetarian, which is to say little or no meat)? HOW THE HELL WOULD I ANSWER THIS QUESTION? “Yes, I like my Portabella Steaks Well Done?” Good God Gurlie, you need to THINK these things through.

Did you like this random survey?
Honestly? I’ve been pondering the best answers all week. If I were answering this for realz, I wouldn’t like it at all. But as Fluff material goes, it’s a gold mine.

Last thing…..Pick a # out of these… 1,2,4,7,14
Well, assuming that I can adjust punctuation to my choosing, 12/14. Happy Birthday to me.

Hey. Somebody just said it was my birthday.

I get alcohol on that day.

KEG PARTY!!!

Don’t forget to fill out some fluff of your own and hook up with Lisa over at Seeking Elevation. [Lisa. I keep calling you Susan today. I have NO idea why.].  Next week, we’re doing This one.

Fiction: Weather

Weather

 “You doing all right?” Al asked, indicating a bandage on his brother’s arm.

Jared grunted. He did not look at the white gauze that stretched from his wrist to his elbow. He said, “You’d never know we had any weather at all to look at your neighborhood.”

“Nope,” Al agreed.

Jared lifted his mug, then cradled it in both hands close to his chest.

“Are you OK?” Al asked again.

Jared leaned forward and set the coffee cup on the table. Finally, he said, “The worst was when the tub flipped. The wind screamed, and the house crashed, and I just laid there under the mattress. And then the tornado picked me up. I lost the mattress, but the tub moved so fast I was glued to the bottom, and I watched that wind snatch the floor right out of my house before it threw me back down on the slab underneath the tub. And then the house thundered down on top of me. I didn’t even notice the cuts until the fire crew dug me out.”

“Well, you came through the other side,” said Al.

“I came through lucky,” Jared agreed.

Outside, a low diesel rumble announced their younger brother’s arrival. Letting himself in the back door, Myron said. “Not much left out at your place.”

Jared said, “Not to speak of.” Then he rose from the table, leaving the coffee behind, and crossed to Myron. They clasped arms; then Al, too stood. He laid a hand on Jared’s shoulder. For that moment, they carried together the weight of the sky and the things men don’t say. Then they let go. Al and Jared returned to the table, and Myron walked over to get himself some coffee.

Myron said. “Cleanup’s going to be a regular beast.”

“That’s for sure,” said Jared, taking a drink from his mug. “A beast.”

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It’s tornado season in the South. And this week’s Trifecta challenge is beast.

Keep, Pitch, Blog

When my friend Jenny is deep-cleaning her life, she has three categories: Keep, Pitch, and Donate.  Scott and I are digging out from under our own hoarders lifestyle, and I’m trying very hard to emulate Jenny’s example. Keep, Pitch, Donate.

Only I don’t think that’s enough categories for me. We’re working on our bedroom, and for my clothes alone, I needed eight classifications:

Dear God It Has Holes In It: Pitch
Christ that’s ugly, but somebody could still use it: Donate
It still fits me but I hate it: Dona…no Pitch…no no … decide later.
In Season: Keep
Out of Season: Keep
Holy Shit When Did I ever Buy One of THOSE?
Good Lord I’ve Been Looking Everywhere For That!
And
Hey! Look! It’s my Killer Nashville Shirt.

It was worse in the kids bathroom last week, when there was more than one type of object to evaluate:

In there, I had

Out of date opiates: Return to pharmacy [they sent me home with some heavy shit that I never used when I had my hysterectomy. I put them in the back-top of the linen closet and forgot them. The kids were never close to them. The Sam’s Club pharmacist just looooked at me when I handed them over].
Out of date shampoo: Pitch
Out of date (ugh, what IS that? Why is it so sticky? I can’t even see the label): Pitch
Towels
Towels with Holes (rag bag)
The Towel Sam Likes to Chew On After He Gets Out of The Tub (Keep until replaced)
Hand towels
Washcloths
Cleaning agents
Random medical supplies (not out of date)
Bag Balm (three tubs – each no doubt purchased when I couldn’t find the last one)
And
Tiny soaps (age uncertain; put in kids’ tub)

Part of the problem here is that I am a cataloger by trade, a librarian who MUST organize things down to their nth degree or not at all. I don’t just want to be able to find the red book on the shelf. I want to find the red book with the gold print down the spine and the little dog bite in one corner. Right where it was the last time.

I have the desire for Library of Congress Classification accuracy in a life that is always going to be Dewey-Decimal-at-best. And knowing that, I therefore struggle to even achieve Dewey.

When sorting my shirts, I had to go through three times, each time winnowing what I could not live without. Some of my shirts were so holey they couldn’t possibly survive another washing. (How can I get rid of something I love so much?) Some of them so awkward they’d only been worn once. (How can I get rid of something I feel so much guilt over?) And some of them I’d forgotten I owned. (How can I get rid of something that I never even gave a chance?) In the end, I got down to around thirty t-shirts. (That category being the worst offender; every other type of clothing gets one drawer at most. But my short sleeved shirts get two.)

In this quest for order, the only thing that gives me hope is also the thing that makes it harder. Scott struggles with the same things. The SAME things. He has shirts in worse condition than mine (but they’re so SOFT! We both sleep in those!) and clothing overload in a variety of other categories as well.

We got through the drawers on Monday. Six bags of donations went out to the car. Today, we start on our closet, an overloaded nightmare of a walk-in room. Technically, it’s big enough to hold  all our hanging clothes plus a dresser. In reality? It looks like a scene out of Poltergeist.

Linda is coming over a noon. She thinks she’s going to pick our brains about something. Really? She’s going to come to the rescue should one of us get lost in there.

Look the Lie

Look the lie

Every night, I watch Joe when I’m supposed to be doing the crossword. He manages the money. He knows. He checks our bank accounts  and does the math. He knows I’m rarely home during the day, and we both know what it means for our future.

Yesterday, he looked up from the computer and said, “Tell me about him, Christie.”

He wasn’t accusing; he wasn’t demanding.  His voice was tinged with sorrow, as if discussing a death.

“Well, you know. He’s young,” I began. I knew the conversation was coming when I took three hundred dollars out of the ATM machine day before yesterday. I braced myself, rehearsed my lines. But I expected Joe to be furious. I thought I could match him anger for anger and lash back saying see what you’ve driven me to? The sorrow though, dried my voice in my throat.

“Is he good in bed?”

“He’s alright. Not as good as you. Just, you know, different.”

“Different,” Joe said. And I thought he might ask Different how? But he didn’t say anything else, just went back to the computer, back to the accounts. Later, he drew me into his arms and said, “I’m glad he isn’t as good as me,” which made it that much worse.

Of course, there is no other man, and Joe knows that. He knew it last night when he asked, and he knew it when I lied. Maybe he thought he could leave me, as long as there was somebody else. Maybe I thought it, too.

At the tables, they call me Mrs. Stone, scoot in my chair, offer me drinks. At the end of the day, they bring my car from the garage. I tip well. I’m not their highest roller, but when I’m there, it’s like the world narrows down to the money and me, to the slots or the chips on the table. My heart throbs and my breath comes fast and heavy. I can feel my own flesh more closely, pressing down in my seat or stool and at the same time floating away with the numbers. I’ll blow my wad for the pleasure of losing it, then come back and do it again, sometimes the same afternoon. It’s nothing at all like making love, and that much at least is true. It isn’t as good as Joe, just different.

Now, I’m watching him at the computer again, knowing that he is watching me as well. He whistles low; I’ve withdrawn some nine hundred dollars from my savings, and not from ATMs, either. There’s a limit to how much one of those will give me. But if I walk up to the counter with the passbook and my ID, the teller would close out the account if I asked.

I want Joe to confront me; I want it out in the open, not tied up in lies and anticipation. But he doesn’t say anything at all. He just goes on with the computer, and I go on with my crossword, as if the biggest lie of our marriage isn’t sitting beside me in my open purse.

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For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Steffani challenged me with “Write about the biggest lie you’ve ever told. (Can be fiction or non-fiction)” and I challenged Tara Roberts with “You have less than two dollars and no access to more money. Begging is illegal and the police are vigilant. How do you get food?”