Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

“Hollow and Full of Stars” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Dear Mr. Kubrick: Hello. A famous director such as yourself might find yourself too busy for correspondence with a teenager from the hinterlands (ie, Nova Scotia, Canada – look north and then wayyyyy east). I hope you don’t mind if I send you this letter in appreciation of your film 2001: A Space Odyssey.  I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey six times last year, mostly with my friend Samantha, and once with my dad, and once alone. I loved the story, and the scenes in space were majestic. It was sad but then the ending was strange and intere...

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“Bennbrig” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #129

The Wolf’s Buckle Inn was not a luxurious resort, but it was successful. It was small, no more than 10 rooms. They were always full. Not with the rich rock climbing socialite crowd, with their platinum plated carabiners and four thousand dollar techno fabric fashion jackets, nor with the skiing crowd - there were no ski facilities. This inn was a haven for those who loved the land.  The man who had trekked the full Appalachian trail three times to raise funds for Virginia coal miners. The woman who had stayed at a base camp on Mt Wash...

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“Proof of Love” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #126

TW: abusive relationship described. Old Man Luedecke had released his Proof of Love album in the late summer. Of course we had seen him live four times through the spring and summer. Once in a church, where the sound rolled through the polished wood like amber honey and scotch pouring into a crystal glass. Twice at the coffeehouse where we sipped our craft sodas with an all ages crowd. And once at a giant club where he looked out of place surrounded with empty stage, perched on a chair with his wool sweater and banjo, and where only about ...

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“3:17 am” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #125

It’s a full moon night, so I plan a photo mission. I load up 90s dance tunes on my phone and cruise social media to see what’s happening downtown. I keep getting ads for this special effects photo app, LoveSnapCraft, so I download it into my Visuals folder where I keep Canva and Boomerang and Layout..  Daisy calls to tell me she can’t come over, but joke’s on her, I never expected her to. Ever since we kind of hooked up a few months ago she’s been drifting away. We hadn’t been hanging out that long. I think she is into me and just not...

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“Designated Mourner: The Team's Back Together” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #119

It was a sound a bit like a plastic spatula scraping the sky, if the sky were filled with tinfoil seagulls who did not particularly want to be scraped, Jonathan had just gotten used to the stillness of the planet, but the biweekly delivery sound was impossible to develop immunity to.  It lasted three minutes and 42 seconds precisely and then a parcel appeared in the air about waist height and plopped onto the sand. This box was larger than usual, and he struggled to cart it up the path to the cottage. After tripping over several pre...

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“More than a phase” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #118

Today’s the day I change.  I whisper this into my mirror so David won’t hear me. It’s been a month since the dog attack. My wounds are mostly healed, but he is still treating me like an invalid.  If he suggests therapy one more time, I will shriek. I don’t have PTSD, I told him. I have OBAVS… Over Being A Victim Syndrome. I .think he was hurt by this, since he’s been my ‘rescuer’ for so long… saving me from being poor, pulling me out of my parent’s clutches. I think he senses something is wrong, but I haven’t been ready to ha...

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“You were never the murderer” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #113

CW substance useI feel so much love for this man. He is trying to kill us. We are a group of about eight, scattered, running up this residential block in the half light before dawn. We dodge around Chevrolet Cavaliers and Ford Escorts parked on the curb. We know he is behind us. If I could just reach him, explain to them, this would be over. A crash of pots starts me awake and I lie, heart racing, listening to rain out the window and breakfast prep in the kitchen.I close my eyes, trying to hold onto the dream images. If I...

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“Flour and fire” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

🏆 Winner of Contest #111

CW: alcoholism, domestic violence Flour is highly flammable, but maybe you know that. I remember once, when I was a teenager, someone at tailgate party tossed a cup of flour into the air over the fire we'd built. It went "WHOOSH" and lit the sky for miles up, or so it seemed. Thank God there was no wind. It was epic. I had had a few tokes and I was trying to articulate to my friend Clarisse how my mother worked with flour every day, making it into things, and yet, watching it become NOTHING was so much more spectacular. Claris...

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“Death Comes to Maxie's” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #110

I guess I should have known things were going to go badly when the milk curdled. I been coming to Maxie’s for my coffee for more than 40 years, and I never got curdled milk before. But there, I added my sugar, two spoons, stirred it up and picked up the little cow-shaped cream pitcher and poured and it all sat sickly white and lumpy in my cup. Depressing, that. Waste a good coffee. It was Wednesday, so that means Wilma was working, except it wasn’t Wilma at all. It was some new girl with blonde curls who kept looking at the phone she was hol...

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“This Tide Lifts Us All” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #106

It was early enough that the dust still glittered in the last rays of sunset through the windows. We picked out a good table, off to the side, sheltered by the bathroom wall. We could stash our stuff in the corner when the time came for dancing, and not worry that some buzzkill would steal our warm jackets.  Danny was acting weird about his new pants because he thought they were blue-green and I'd made the mistake of calling them turquoise. I hoped that more people would arrive soon to distract him. So far there was only us and what l...

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“You can take the boy out of the island but....” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #100

Ewan sat frowning, surrounded by cookbooks. He knew Gene wasn’t vegetarian. And he hated fish, which was perfect, because Ewan couldn’t cook fish. But then, Genevieve could be vegetarian, or pescatarian, or any other damn fool food fad. He didn’t know Genevieve. Chicken was safe, and he could make chicken really well. But was it too safe? I mean, you see your brother for the first time in five years, you want to celebrate. Do you serve chicken? Ewan had chicken twice a week. It didn’t feel special enough. But steak felt too… assertively ...

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“The Dark Before Dawn” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #99

TW: domestic abuseI was a pale, plump university graduate, applying my Bachelor of Arts to my first city job, as a sandwich artist. My first boyfriend, Stuart, was a tall, serious sociology student, who worked campus security. We lived in a dorm apartment which it seemed I only saw during the day, sliding out in the still-dark to open the sub shop, or limping home, onion-scented, bathed in cold cuts, after the cabaret crowd had surged and ebbed. Thinking back on that summer, it seems to throb with thumping music and spicy peppers, and a...

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“Crow Sammiches” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #98

This is how Byers’ special Saturday Crow Sammiches works: you start with two fresh slices of white bread. Cousin Kim apparently uses whole wheat bread, but she also gives her kids Ovaltine, so take that for what it’s worth.  Anyway, two fresh slices of white, you spread them thick with margarine or butter (whatever’s cheaper, as mom would say). Onto this you squirt classic yellow mustard, and then you sprinkle both sides with sugar. Close the sandwich, cut in triangles. Put on a paper towel, carry it to the back of the yard at dusk,...

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“Healing the cracks” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #97

Bella bobbed along the path, counting roots. She had picked some berries, and eaten some berries, and then picked some wildflowers. At some point, the path she was following became forest. Bright yellow mushrooms drew her eye, and then feathery ferns. She heard a rustling in the trees above and a hoot. She looked up, surprised to see it was getting dark. Suddenly, nothing looked familiar. Her chin trembled and tears welled.  Katrina never would have let her wander so far away, but Katrina was gone and Mommy said she wasn't coming ba...

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“Letting the Magic Happen” by Charlene 🧙‍♀️✨ Boyce

Submitted to Contest #96

It was the cleanest and most soulless room in the house. An old single bed made up with a plain blue blanket, a small nightstand, a built-in bookshelf where a closet might be. A single off-size window, too narrow for egress. Luckily, no building inspector had spent the night in here. Janet claimed, to all and sundry, that no one had. It was a tiny room, barely wide enough for the bed and nightstand. The walls were plain white. There was no art. The bookshelf held a set of encyclopedias that had been a good investment in 1952, and now served ...

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