Refracted Neurons

Source:  https://pixabay.com/illustrations/hands-sphere-light-fingers-magic-1835994/ “What kind of magic was that?”  Orville opened his eyes.  Pain dug its claws into his chest, making every breath he drew an agony.  The sky above him was a searing blue, interrupted only by a gust of sand that rolled over him like a fog.  Choking, he tried to sit up, but unseen hands pinned him to the ground.  Unable to do anything else, he made the sign for Light with his right hand.  He was certain he would suffocate, his pulse banging in his ears, his brain screaming for air.  The wind billowed around him, stinging him with sand.  It gusted, it wafted, and then it was still.  Light filtered through the brown air from his hand.  It was only enough to illuminate the space around him, nowhere near enough to inflict damage on the unseen enemy. And still, the hands held him down. The sand swirled in the air like dust motes.  He co...

We were driving by the mall the other day when I saw it. There's a hole in the mall where the men can see it all.   "What are they doing now?" I turned around in my seat. "They're, you know, tearing it down," my husband seems unsurprised. "But there's a hole in the side of the building!  I have to go back there."  I couldn't get very close to the construction for obvious reasons, but I did get a couple of shots over the fence of a crane tearing the ever-loving capitalism out of the store. Inside they extended the wall, and now there's a small passageway through the center guarded at either end by construction workers. The empty center of the mall, ready for demolition. Even more shops seem to be empty than last time I was here.  The RAM and Bergmans were empty save employees hauling equipment out of the shops. This used to be Bergman's Since there wasn't much new I could see, I drove around the...

Now I know people love stories of dead or dying malls, I mean, I do too.  Empty institutional architecture puts the honey on my peanut butter toast.  But there's a difference between stores fleeing a mall because there are no patrons and stores fleeing a mall because someone’s gonna drop an ice rink on it. And that, my friend, is the story of Northgate Mall. The white space is exactly that; empty. I went there last week to eat belt sushi and made a disquieting discovery: The center of the mall has been walled off.  The food court end of the mall was surprisingly busy for a Friday mid-day, but the other end was pretty dead.  Oddly, there was at least one mall-walker and I could not figure out for the life of me how she was going to walk the mall.  Jump over the barrier and power walk through the vacant center?  Or maybe she was gonna do what I did, and pop in different entrances whack-a-mole style until she found something other than a wall. ...

Photo by Manel Torralba “That’s the wrong way to do that,” Grimmett put his hand over Jade’s, then drew it back, “Are you wearing gloves?”  The other students didn’t look up from their workbenches, but their movements seemed to slow as they eavesdropped. Glass work was too dicey to stop, one hesitation and hours of work could shatter. Jade looked at the malformed bead on her mandrel. She, on the other hand, had nothing to lose. Setting the mandrel on the graphite benchtop, she slid her hands out of the gloves, “I really don’t want to get burned.”  “If you let your fear dictate what you do as a lampworker, you will never improve,” Grimmett raised his voice so the whole class could hear over the hiss of their torches. “If you continue to work in glass, you will at some point get burned,” he pulled down on the neck of his shirt, exposing the top of a scar, a patch of skin melted and discolored by heat.  Ignoring him, Jade rapped her mandrel on the benchtop ...

Yellow jacket makes them sound like the gentlemen of wasps, as if they buzz around in little top hats, waving miniature canes.  These wasps are no gentlemen. Honestly, we've had them around our yard for years.  We have flowers blooming from spring until fall, and with that comes bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.  They usually buzz us when we're eating outside, completely unaffected by the citronella candle. A butterfly on our hydrangea tree Then I stepped in their nest.  I was trying to trim a blackberry bush that was growing in an ever-expanding patch of Saint John's Wort.  I hate doing this because I can't see where I'm putting my feet, and in this case, one of my legs went straight down into a hole. "That's weird," I said, pulling my leg out. "What's weird?" asked my son.  He and his sister were supposed to be playing in the backyard, but for some reason watching me do yard work was more exciting.  It was about to ge...

Image by  congerdesign  from  Pixabay Dearthart Justice was in the kitchen, scapular smeared with flour.   “Hot in here,” Dearthart Eden pulled lir tunic away from lir chest. “You don’t have to be in here,” Justice worked the rolling pin, muscles bunching in lir arms. “Yes, but I wanted to talk to you about something that has been troubling me,” Eden leaned against the wooden counter. “Oh, not you too,” Justice swiped a sleeve across lir forehead, leaving a streak of white, “If one more person leaves the Deharthood to marry, I shall be forced to use miniature bread pans.” Eden laughed, “No, it’s not that.  It all started with my desk. You know how it faces the window?  I get so distracted watching the squirrels swirl around the tree like dancers, or sometimes there’d be a bird with a twig in its mouth . . .” “Not to mention that fool of a Dearthart that always waves at you from the path,” Justice eased the rectangle of d...

Images from Pixabay “I didn’t invite you here to ask for your help,” Kim lied, “It’s been a while since we’ve got together.” Blush streaked across Richard’s cheeks, down to the collar of his uniform, “Aren’t you married?” “Was,” she slid a hand into his lap. Richard yanked on the collar of his ballistic vest, the Velcro shricking its way open, ”I’m really sorry about your cousin, but I’m just a patrol officer.  We don't have access to homicide files.” ”She isn't - wasn’t my cousin.  She was my cousin’s wife.  She had a name, ” Kim took her hand away, dug in her purse.  ”Here,” she put the picture in front of him, ”Her name was Sol.” ”Your cousin’s wife?  And you have how many cousins with how many spouses?” Richard folded his arms, the muscles bunching underneath his sleeves. Kim slid the 8x10 off the bed, careful to touch only the edges, “Forget I said anything.  I mean, who cares if two of my cousins died in the past year.” “I thought ...