INTERPRETIVE ARTS

Here is an excerpt from Lady G's book of four short stories, Two Pairs of Shorts.

Babs' downstairs neighbor had her radio on too loud again. It was a typical Nagoya summer night: beyond hot, it was killer hot, sultry, no-relief hot, and everyone's windows (and pores) were open. Everything Babs touched stuck to her. Great gobs of sweat rolled down her back, her chest, off her scalp and brow and, stinging, into her eyes. She lay naked in front of the fan and poured sweat into her pillow, her sheet-covered futon, the pages of the book she was too hot to read.

The music made her sweat more; it was torrid enka, the Japanese equivalent of the torch song, and it had been blasting for four and a half hours. It was now midnight.

Babs barely knew her downstairs neighbor; she didn't know her name and, having exchanged maybe a dozen greetings with her in the past three years, would have been a little embarrassed to ask, until about a month ago. That's when this nonsense with the radio had begun. Babs threw on a tee-shirt and a pair of shorts, stuck her feet halfway into her running shoes and dragged herself downstairs to the apartment directly below hers. She knocked on the door.

After a few moments she knocked again. When that produced no results she tried the door. It was open, Japanese-style, which would not have surprised Babs except that it was midnight. She pushed the door ever-so-slightly open and called out, "Sumimasen...." Getting no response to this either emboldened her to step into the genkan and call out again. From the genkan she could see that the entire apartment was dark and that a dark figure lay huddled in the center of the nearest room.

"Oh, my God," whispered Babs, slipping out of her shoes and making her way toward the figure, feeling along the wall for a light switch. When she found it, she gasped, "Oh, my God" again: both the room itself and the young woman who lay in fetal position at its center were splashed, spattered and smeared with blood.


HOMETAROTDREAMSG CLUBPOETRYCONTEST! MUSIC ACTORS WEBRING TRAVEL WEBRINGSMORE WEBRINGSEVEN MORE WEBRINGSSTILL MORE WEBRINGSWOULD YOU BELIEVE MORE WEBRINGS?MIND & BODYFASHIONFREEBIZODD LINKSNET & SEARCHGENESSA BOOKS, MUSIC, GIFTSCATSORGANIZATIONSWEB SERVICESEDITORIAL SERVICESACTORSNEW CHELMGAMESCAT'S CRADLE PUBLISHINGCAT'S MEOW SPONSORS