Truth & Consequences
Featuring stories by Emma Bushnell, Swati Khurana, Matt Pelkey, and Michele Filgate; brought to life by actors Amber Bogdewiecz, Amanda Erin Miller, Alex C. Ferrill, and Michaela Morton.
Hosted by Andrew Lloyd-Jones and Nancy Hightower at KGB Bar on 5th October 2016.
Master Class
by Emma Bushnell
Thanks to Davis, Mia arrived late to the Blossom Academy. She slid in a seat close to the door. Seven well-groomed women and one man sat at a wide, slate table set with shears, wire cutters, green florist tape, and aprons bearing the flower school’s logo folded into a neat rectangle.
“The French style is not to wire so much,” a scowling Frenchman was explaining. He stood at a smaller slate table across from them, methodically stripping pale pink roses of shriveled outer petals and tossing them to the floor. A young assistant swept the debris away almost as soon as it fell. He was gorgeous, darkly featured and disheveled in a French way, looking as though he’d been sent down from central casting. A bright light, almost like a spotlight, shone directly down on the demonstration table.
We Hate Daddy’s Girlfriends
by Swati Khurana
We hate Daddy’s girlfriends. They seem earnest—too earnest; Mommy is suspicious of earnestness. Mommy says the Buddha says that life is full of suffering, so earnestness is bullshit. Daddy says Mommy is not a Buddhist, and that Mommy curses too much. We like when Mommy curses.
We hate these girlfriends when Daddy’s is supposed to spend his “visitation” with just us. We hate these girlfriends, when they are boring like the first one, when we were 7 and 10, the one who wanted to flat-iron our hair whenever she came over.
Possessed
by Michele Filgate
Birdie peers out the poorly lit window of my ex-boyfriend's house, her paws perched on the top of the frayed couch. Her stare, a mournful stare I know so well, is with me during the long, monotonous drive from Maine to Connecticut. It's as if there's a specter with me in the car. I touch the back of my neck and will it to go away. It won't.
I used to watch "Unsolved Mysteries" when I was a kid. There was
a particularly creepy episode in which a ghostly face floats behind a window. That face still looms in my imagination years later.
My dog haunts me, too. The worst ghosts are the ones that are alive. You yearn for them, and yet you have no closure. They continue breathing and eating and sleeping and dreaming. And you do the same.
Every dog on the street reminds me of her. Every goddamn one.
You’re Going to Be Totally Fine
by Matt Pelkey
A week after I cheated on Rachel, we set up her laptop and watched a movie in bed. She lay beside me, her shoulder away from mine. The bottom of the computer rested on my legs and it made them hot.
The movie was a good excuse not to talk and we let it play. About halfway through, a moth flew past my shoulder and bounced from the screen. It tumbled through the air and when I swatted at it, I felt its body hit my palm. I arched my fingers to form a cage but nothing squirmed in my fist.