Madame Ripple’s Timepieces – Part III
Memories, like produce, have a certain shelf life. They’re clearest when fresh. Time blurs them with a generous spread of sepia toned patina.
Helena
“You know what’s cool? Our names start with the same letter!”
With my green marker I drew two thick parallel lines and connected them with a neat horizontal line.
“H”, she let the letter linger on her tongue. Her face wrinkled into a child-like smile. She had learnt her first English alphabet at the age of 35.
Birth of an Era
When she stomped her feet like a petulant child, the matchstick world trembled. Her cosmical body moved to a terrifying drumbeat only she could hear, all the time ululating in grief over the horrors she was unleashing on her own children.
I Promise
Muses and ideas are fickle and stubborn. They don’t care if you have a deadline or a writing marathon. They show up whenever they want to.
Tiny Shoes
With their candyfloss pink tutus, their hair high in slick buns and their flesh-pink ballet shoes, they looked like elegant flamingos.
What You Don’t Know
You’re teenagers, you’re hormonal, I get it. I was a teenager once. But here’s another thing which you (probably) don’t know. One day, you will be me.
Stranger than Fiction
She flaps her wings and melts into the horizon. It’s freezing here. I can feel my blood coagulate. It probably looks like strawberry jello on the inside.
Madame Ripple’s Timepieces – Part II
Another guard sits in his high tower like an angry demigod looking over his creation. A few women and children in their blue and white striped uniforms and shaved heads stare vacantly at us. Their eyes are like little broken windows. These children have probably seen more horrors in their tiny lifetimes than I’ve seen in my entire life.
Madame Ripple’s Timepieces
This place is dark, not literally. It must be around 10 in the morning, but the city is as quiet as a cemetery at night. It sucks the air out of me. This seems like a place where where happiness comes to die. The air hangs thick, as if the sky was filled with viscous tar. I see barbed wire everywhere. The staccato clomping of combat boots is probably the only heartbeat this place has.
Upside Down Plum Cake
This upside down plum cake feeds my undying love for fruit desserts. The mild tartness of the plums combines perfectly with the sweet cake batter and the juice from the plums keeps the cake moist. It’s a melt-in-your-mouth perfection.