by S.H. Gall
I am a 33 year old drag queen, and I frequently confuse my dreams with reality.
Each morning, I awake to a research project: what has actually occurred, and what was a dream? Today I woke up believing I'd lost a pound, so I weighed myself, and I was right. This was reality. Good for me.
And there was a condom wrapper on the floor. I don't know what that means. I smell myself and I smell like myself and no one else. Did I eat a condom?
They say we shouldn't drink water from plastic bottles, because that plastic bottle emits a chemical very similar to synthetic estrogen. As a drag queen, I drink exclusively from plastic bottles. It's my duty. I also enjoy breakfasts of Special K cereal in berry-flavored yogurt. It's tart and also sweet and crunchy and also mushy.
Scientists have found that the albatross can fly and sleep simultaneously. If this is the case, how on earth does the albatross define and construct reality?
On further reflection, the albatross's condition is not much different than sleepwalking in humans.
That reminds me. When I was six, I got lost in a strange city on a family vacation and found myself in an aviary.
There were parrots everywhere. I walked and walked until there were penguins instead of parrots; then I walked into a hawk exhibit, thinking maybe Dad would be there. He wasn't. My whole family was somewhere outside the aviary.
Hours later, exhausted, I begged an albatross for help. His beak was like the hold of a ship. It opened, and words poured out. I listened, entranced by avian poetry.
“FREEZE!”
It was a man very much like Dad, but dressed as a security guard.
It seems I've somehow gotten inside the albatross habitat. There are people gawking at me behind a wall of glass.
I lunge for the exit, am brought down by a Thorazine dart. After several hours in a faceless morass of starched white figurines who chirp incoherently, I wake up, and breathe. “It's OK,” I tell myself. “How ridiculous to think I was ever six years old.”
Based upon a word/topic prompt from Meg Pokrass's website.
Seth Gall has had work published in China, Canada, and the U.S. His work has appeared in Word Riot, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Nanoism. He is S.H. Gall in decomP Magazine, Nanoism, issues one and 27 of SmokeLong Quarterly, Five Star Literary Stories, and Fictionaut.
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This piece is forthcoming in Staccato Fiction.
I like this for it's ride on the edge, a tire balanced on a tightrope.
Thank you Susan. This is one of the strangest pieces I've ever written... Meg Pokrass's word prompt sent me on a wild goose chase.
No, she set you on the edge and you rode it out beautifully.
Well, wow. This story was weird to me because it contains a lot of truths. Unlike my last Meg P. word prompt I didn't structure the story around the words at all.
I love, love, love this, S.H.
Thanks, Marcelle!
I am blown away that this grew out of a word prompt - really, really wonderful and wild and each image built on the last perfectly for me. Very glad to have met your work today.
Thank you Julie! Praise from a writer of your caliber is prized indeed.
Not easy to dramatize the abyss that lies between reality and illusion in so few words. Love the "magical thinking" solution at the end, which bookends so tightly with the first line: the adult narrator doesn't find ridiculous that a six-year-old is shot with a Thorazine dart, but that he was ever six years old. FINE work.
Thank you for the close read, Barry!
Love those word prompts! This story is a lot of fun to read. It's also expertly structured and written. Kudos. A star, too.
Great to hear from you Jack. Glad you liked it!
surreal.