5 Ridgeway

by Sarah Pace

Last night was one of those long nights of the soul in which one hour was spent feigning sleep and the other seven were spent on the floor of the bathroom. The smell of urine and hair product filled my lungs, already black from the smoke of one thousand stolen cigarettes hidden in the bushes of our backyard. The faux-hardwood floorboards press into the vertebrae of my spine and I have never felt anything better than the rocking of bone against pine, save the inhalation of cancer through poison wrapped in paper. Luckily, the contents of my belly and the creamy chicken casserole for dinner decide the stomach is a better place to take up temporary residence than the cesspool of local water purification, and for the next few hours I am saved. My only hope is that the sounds of my body writhing stretch no further than my ceiling, and that you welcome the night visions of naked women and pleasure after seven long years of never sleeping next to the soft breasts of a woman. My body shakes, pain quickly crashes through my veins while memories of your ex-wife - my pseudo mother - flood the tunnels of my mind: it gets like this whenever I remember why we killed her, but I refuse to ask God for forgiveness.

6S

Sarah Pace, author of nothing but the contents of her unpublished, angst-filled moleskin, lives in Fanwood, New Jersey, and is convinced that she is a forgotten member of the Royal Family. So being, she plans to find a nice bench on the River Thames at a time well suited for her independence to pursue her dreams as a silent, maladjusted literary critic and egotistical food buff.