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Gumball Machines and Death
She sat in a wicker chair by the woodstove peeling paint off an old paint-spattered bible and
thumping the floor with the heel of her foot. She hummed, mildly hummed a song she'd once wildly sung.
But that was long ago and everything had quieted. The speakers were all blown out and off in webby corners now.
The flying V-guitars looked geeky and old-fashioned now. Even her dreams seemed a little geeky.
It's like the rocker rocked itself closer to the edge of the canyon with every forward rock.
It was awfully deep and there were crows whirling around below. With little chairs on their backs.
Carrying Disney princesses further into animation. Her animation questions swam in her. She blinked
coyly at her big dark dreams, so handsome and nonsensical. Couldn't she ever ride with them? She was
so close to the edge of the canyon and she was beginning to doubt that the bible would hold her up when
she fell. It's just not fair, she told the Disney princesses, that you should be so blond and the rest
of us so smart.
Over a canyon too deep for perception of the bottom she sensed fire. She was an everyday lady with things
like washing machines and quarters and dirty underpants and internal volcanoes erupting silently. There
was a princess taking a snooze inside the gumball machine at the bottom of Rattle Snake Trail. She'd
already tried it, just to see how the other half lived, and what she found out was that the other half
lived just the same way she did except with more money. They had dirty underpants and deep burning
canyons just like her. It wasn't really fair to any of them really, that the bible should understand
itself and leave the rest to gumball machines and death.
Too see or bleed into it, this was her question.
There were sisters who rattled the air with their non-breath. They reached inside the antennae of their
psyches and found people tuned in to them. They pulled people out from under the nails of their little
pinkies and threaded them through the needles of their hearts. It had happened to her too. She pricked
herself with something so sharp that soon she couldn't remember her name or anyone else's. Only his. And oh,
he was a stranger. That made it better somehow. It made her want to dance on cloud feet over a canyon too
deep to ever cry into. But she had great big tears of fire anyway.
Her life is always more animated than anything on TV.
Phoebe Wilcox lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Her novel, Angels Carry the Sun is pending publication
with Lilly Press, and an excerpt from a second novel, Flower Symbolism for Dummies, has been published in Wild Violet.
Recent and forthcoming work may be found in Sixers Review, Illumen, A cappella Zoo, Folly Magazine, The Chaffey Review,
Calliope Nerve, The Battered Suitcase, Ginosko, Frostwriting, Gloom Cupboard and many others. Her stories have twice
been nominated for the Pushcart prize. Web Site
Email: Phoebe Wilcox
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