CarmenKern.com
writer of fantasy and other strangeness
The Fates, sisters, weavers, sat in the stiff theatre chairs they had complained about for decades. They were the sort who took comfort in stiff and creaking joints. The morning show was a doubleheader. Two lovers who found each other late in life. The one sister crocheted a long scarf, alternating spring green and...
It was hard for her to remember what it had looked like before the quake. Before the earth shook them around like a snow globe, and drywall crumbled, and waters rose and swelled over banks to flood streets, pushing cars and walls and people along with furniture and livestock. She was old, but her wits...
the sun pouring like honey through our bedroom window drinking lukewarm coffee because I don’t want to get up and not hear you breathe just to nuke it hot the red of the apple I had for lunch, the crunch of it when I bit in the white of fresh stucco on...
Once, there was sky and land and water and nothing more. It was good. But sometimes good can be better. A seed was thrown to the wind. It was carried through sky, across land and fell to the water. It was pushed ashore by waves, and there it made its home. The seed became...
What you don’t know is how Goldilocks got to the bear’s house in the first place. She was running, from her father’s silence and to her mother’s ghost––a shimmering figure who wore the face of her mother but had longer hair, slimmer hips, and black button eyes, but it was her alright. It was...
The day smelled of cut flowers and suntan lotion. The finned ’85 Chevy cut a fine line down the gravel road. Cans of Bud Light bounced off the ground and took flight once we got to the main road.
I’ve been thinking a lot about age lately. Could be that the infamous five-oh has been staring me in the face since February. That’s when Time showed up. My birthday wasn’t until August but she would flare her red skirt in the shadows of my home, catching my attention. Then she’d leave. She (yes, Time is...
It’s not just about having cases of water or tins of beans; it’s a mindset, a mindset that could save your bacon, said the man who could have been a preacher in a previous life. The blue vein in his temple pulsed as he talked, I couldn’t look away from it, as if it was...
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