Walking Boss Cooper wanted to show me a cask of Amontillado she had stored deep in the bowels of Our Smiley Face of Darkness. An elevator located in the recently abandoned Human Resources Departmen…

Source: Our Smiley Face of Darkness by Irene Allison

There may be organizations more useless in the universe than my union, but I’m at a loss to name one. Just this afternoon I was seated at the wrong side of my rep’s desk; and although the gent even…

Source: The Amalgamated Union of Pennames and Imaginary Friends by Leila Allison

Charleston’s White Pig Tavern became legal at the end of Prohibition. Built on the outskirts of town along an old wagon trail later to be named Corson Street, and not far from the Philo Bay …

Source: Saint Frances Everlasting by Leila Allison

The importance of making Black Friday earlier and earlier will invent time travel. Soon, Black Friday will occur on the day prior to the Big Bang.

IT Happens Every Other Sunday OVERTIM1.docx

We need seven years or so to make a mirror. For that is how long it takes the body to finish writing a new face. The first two mirrors are devoted to the creating process; after that, even in our fiery mid-teens, we become palimpsests whose future texts debase the original good ideas.

Unless a person dies or is born with a godless oops! in their system, mirrors three and four contain a thriving image–perhaps even beauty. But inside the inferno that had shone bright like a short-lived blue star has burned out. Three and four subsist on what will not be replenished.

This sort of thing first becomes apparent in mirror five. A gray intruder in an otherwise pure field of russet; a rumor that all is not as it should be around the eyes. You ignore the whispers until a younger 7-11 clerk asks to see your ID when you make that type of purchase. The flattery of the moment goes bad when he says, “Sorry, ma’am, but the law’s the law.”  And there is something in his late third mirror face that commiserates the absurdity of it all as he dutifully glances at your license without checking your birth date.

To be continued…