Elena Rouse

“Wait. What Happened on the Subway?” by Elena Rouse

It arrived with a snap. My puffy eyes caught it between the jolts of Tuesday's beige morning commute. I was in my usual spot, standing in the 8:15 green line car. The one that always landed right in front of the stairway entrance. The bridge of an acoustic cover swirled around my headphones, a modern-Broadway hit surely in the queue. The music, had I been a hunchbacked and ancient type, might have been considered somewhat loud, but it ensconced me in infectious rhythms, and dulled my other senses so that I watched the world of commuters a...

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“Circus Magic” by Elena Rouse

Submitted to Contest #103

It was magic. No, not the contorting trapeze artists soaring over the sea of top hats, or the cigarette smoke that shrouded the performers in a mystical frame. Not the animals I had never seen before, larger and stranger than any novel had ever dared to describe, painted and coaxed into submission by the whip held by a man in a ridiculous costume. The twinkle that came with the ring leader’s eye was a fox, and the audience was his prey. When he smiled, I swore his teeth were just the slightest bit sharp at the edges. It wasn’t any of th...

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“Roots” by Elena Rouse

Submitted to Contest #99

I stir the pot because my mother is dead. Around and around the stew goes, hypnotically swirling about in the rusty pot upon our gritty stove top. The open window to my left made me vulnerable to the sounds of the children playing soccer in the street below. Cars beep occasionally to shoo them out of the street. Vendors on their way home from a long day of work stop to sit on the stoops in front of their apartments, too exhausted to muster up the strength to climb the steps and face their families whom they can’t fully provide for. It is in ...

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“Journey to the Unknown Story” by Elena Rouse

Submitted to Contest #98

Everyone has a story. That’s a pretty basic fact about human existence I think everyone would probably agree with.We all have somewhere we came from, people we’ve met, loved ones, or things, or moments that have been swept up into the oblivion of the past. And it’s not just memories you’ve experienced directly that create you. It’s years, maybe even decades, of history. Your history. There have been people and places far and wide interlocking, then dispersing only to interlock with someone new, somewhere else, that have all led to the moment...

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“An Unlikely Situation” by Elena Rouse

Submitted to Contest #95

“Well this is an unlikely situation.” Talia stared at both the man covered in filth and the teenage boy holding a warped trombone. The 83 year old had that look about her- like a thousand gusts of wind swarmed her with a hoard of mismatched fabric and afterwards she just went with it. She was perched on a park bench with her beading kit, like she did every day. The men nearby assumed her words were unrelated to them. They were wrong. The two men were, as it happens, wrong about just about everything. A tale as old as time, really. ...

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“Louder Than Words” by Elena Rouse

Submitted to Contest #76

If life was a dance, then Hazel was off beat. Everything was throwing off her rhythm. Lately, it was as if she moved like one of those blow up tube dancers in front of car dealerships; painfully uncoordinated but something people couldn’t seem to stop looking at. The looks she got as her 70s platforms clomped down the hallway burned the back of her neck, and the whispers that filled her ears distracted her from her usual steady beat. These constant missteps, though, were not caused solely by the whispers or the looks. In fact, Hazel liked it...

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“The Gatekeepers” by Elena Rouse

Submitted to Contest #72

She wasn’t supposed to be alive.            They had a plan. They watched, pupils dilating with unparalleled shock as the monitors as big as the stumps of a red wood splashed the target’s steps on the bustling sidewalk. Her heart-beating, blood pumping, alert, and alive, very much alive footsteps. How could this have happened? They all thought collectively. Never had they been unable to plan, predict, and manipulate the puppets who referred to themselves as human beings but to them had...

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“Sweeter Than Sugar” by Elena Rouse

Submitted to Contest #71

“I loathe him for his sugar cookie recipe. That’s all.” I protested, shoving the tray full of gingerbread cupcakes into the holly filled display. Mr. Braverman chuckled, crinkling the crow’s feet around his eyes.            “You and I both know that is not all, but if that’s what you insist is the issue then you will have no problem putting that aside to work together for the Christmas festival.” I rolled my eyes. I had been avoiding this conversation. Mr. Braverman had been coming into ...

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“It All Comes Out” by Elena Rouse

Submitted to Contest #70

If people asked him what he was doing, he told them he was truth seeking. The reality was a lot less glorious. His hands would twitch as his thoughts were ravaged by the demons of hypotheticals. As townsfolk shuffled into his shop, the bell of above the door signifying their arrival, the squeak of their rain boots and the stolen glances could not succeed in distracting him from the concentration on his analysis of those “maybes” that looped through his head. Mothers who strolled between the appliance aisles pressed their brows together as th...

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