Contributor: Moxie Malone

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"Hello you. How was your trip?" he asked her as she entered.

"Fun...wondrous...interesting. It was everything you said it would be," she beamed as she dashed in. "Still, it's good to be back," she added and wrapped herself around him.

He chuckled as he drew her close, "It's good to have you back."

"Ummmhmm," she purred as she wallowed in his loving embrace. "Next time we should go together."

"We'll have to plan that. So, tell me all about it. Did you get to do everything we talked about?"

"I sure did," she told him excitedly. "Some things more than once!"

"Food?" he asked.

"Yum!" she exclaimed.

"Dancing?" he queried.

"Oh, I danced until I dropped from exhaustion," she told him, giggling.

"Sex?"

"Well, sure. There was plenty of opportunity for that," she laughed. "It would have been better with you there, though."

He flexed and squeezed her.

She sighed a bit, "It's...it's...just so hard to get close to anyone, you know?"

"I know. It's such a short time. It seems like you just get there and get the hang of things and it's time to come home."

"There is that, but...," she paused as she pressed into him, simply luxuriating in the feel of him.

"But?" He asked as he held and stroked her.

She drew back a moment as she collected her thoughts, "I just don't see how anyone can ever get close to anyone, there. Things get in the way."

"Things," he repeated as he considered what she was saying. "Ah," he said as he pulled her back to him, "You mean the bodies."

She felt herself happily, blissfully melting into him, "Exactly. You can't do this with bodies. They just get in the way."


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Moxie is a purveyor of dreams, fantasies and the occasional nightmare -- Purv for short. Usually sensual, often romantic, frequently erotic, sometimes humorous and nearly always offbeat aiming for provocative, the stories that she writes as well as the people, places and events found in them are pure fiction and nothing more - as far as you know.

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Author: Moxie Malone

Contributor: Samantha Memi

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I was lying in bed wondering if the hotel would remember to wake me in the morning when a gecko came in through the window and walked along the wall.
I was too tired to shoo it away.
“You won't hurt me will you, Mr Gecko.”
“I'm looking for roaches, big fat juicy roaches. What would I want with the likes of you.” and he continued his journey on the wall.
Just as I was drifting into sleep he started whistling. There's nothing worse than a whistling gecko when you're trying to sleep.
“Do you mind not whistling?” I asked.
“What's with all the complaining?” he replied, “you get on with your life and I'll get on with mine.”
“Yes, but your whistling bothers me.”
“You're breathing bothers me. Do I complain about it? No. Why not? Because I believe in letting others live their lives the way they want to. But not you. You want to dictate to others how they should live.”
He stopped whistling. I drifted. I needed to get to the train station early to ensure I got a ticket.
He started singing. It was a song about a cockroach who fell in love with a grasshopper and wooed her with many gifts and just as they were about to marry both were eaten by a gecko. I asked him not to sing.
“What? you wanna run my life for me? I can't do anything because big fat Miss Human thinks she can tell me what I can and can't do.”
“I want to get some sleep.”
“I'm not stopping you.”
“You’re singing.”
“I like to sing. You don't like singing and that gives you the right to stop me.”
“I do like singing, but...”
“You like Mozart?”
“That wasn't Mozart.”
“I didn't say it was, I asked if you liked him.”
“Yes.”
“You like Don Giovanni?”
“I have to get up in the morning. I just want to sleep. This is my room.”
“Your room? So I'm not allowed in? Is that what you're saying? Do I tell you not to climb my tree? No. And you know why? Because I don't have a tree. Did you ever see a gecko struggling along with a backpack? No. You know why? Because we’re free. We're not enslaved by possessions and all your stupid this is my room, this is my bed, this is my space. You should learn how to live.”

This was too much. I had to see Janine tomorrow. I got out of bed.
“Hey hey hey,” screamed the gecko, “I know you're bigger than me. But there's no need to resort to violence. Why don't we settle this matter amicably.”
I picked up a newspaper and shooed him out of the room. I closed the shutters and the window, and lay down. Without the cool breeze it was too sticky hot to sleep. The hotel sign squeezed intermittent orange and green through gaps in the shutters. I listened to the crickets. Then from the window I heard a squeaky song:

The grasshopper and the cockroach they wanted to wed.
But sly Mr Gecko, he ate them instead.
And selfish Miss Human, she lay on her bed.
Thinking and dreaming that he would be dead.
But a gecko so lively, it has to be said,
Could outwit a human without any dread.

Sleep was out of the question. I went down to the bar.
“There's a gecko in my room.”
“All the rooms have geckos.”
“It's singing.”
“Opera?”
“It's keeping me awake and I have to get up early to buy a train ticket.”
“I can sell you a ticket. Where are you going?”

Ticket in hand and no thought of queues in the morning, I went back to my room and opened the window.
The gecko stood on the window ledge.
“Oh, it's you,” he said.
“Do you know the duet of Don Giovanni and Zerlina?”
The gecko coughed and cleared his throat, he stood on his hind legs and looked at me. In perfect Italian he sang:
Lá ci darem la mano, lá mi dirai di sì
I stood by the open window bewitched by the sunrise gradating into the purpling sky and sang:
Vorrei e non vorrei, mi trema un poco il cor
The gecko stood on the ledge, his slit eyes gazing at me, and our hearts came together in Mozart, and I forgot about queues and train stations and lived for the moment, not for tomorrow.


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Samantha Memi lives in London. Her fictional life can be found at http://samanthamemi.weebly.com/

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Author: Samantha Memi

Contributor: Marissa Medley

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When I met her for the first time, we were at a funeral. Everyone was so somber, which is to be expected at a gathering of the kind. It was interesting for me to see how everyone coped with the loss. Women cried into the arms of their husbands. Husbands patted the backs of their close friends saying things like “How unexpected” and “What a great loss”. The little children cried for their mothers and asked what was wrong. The mothers replied in sweet voices trying to keep in their tears. They didn't want to explain that someone they all once knew and loved had died. The crowd all around me was quiet and sad. Almost everyone had cried at some point except for me and her. When I looked at her, her face was even more blank than mine.
I felt uncomfortable to watch her. She was there just watching everyone pass by her. Like her, I was just there to support my family. We both watched as people passed by the body. The mother of the daughter who had died was crying hysterically. The cries reached a volume that seemed too loud to be coming out of a human body.
As other people started to go up to see the casket, I stayed behind to watch the children. There was something so beautiful in their innocence. I envied their ability to be at the funeral without feeling guilty that they were still alive. They had no idea that someday there would be a funeral for them. Soon though, they would find out how life ends.
One of the little girls I was watching ran over to her crying grandmother.
“What's wrong Gramma?” she asked.
“Gramma lost something very precious to her,” she answered while barely keeping her composure.
“What'd you lose, Gramma?”
“I lost a precious gem. A very, very, very precious gem,” the grandmother said while picked up the child. She held the girl so close as if she were afraid that death would fly in at that moment and take another granddaughter away from her.
The crying grandmother had made me feel horrible for not joining her in being sad. Instead, I just felt guilty. To take my mind off of the guilt, I looked up and saw the blank faced girl still there. Even though her face was blank, there was some sort of a peace in her expression. There were no tears coming from her eyes. She had been wearing an odd item for a funeral. On top of her head sat a tan cowboy hat. Nobody seemed to care or notice. They acted like it was just part of her.
“Would you like to come up and see the body?” asked a man I had come with.
I wasn't terribly excited to go up and see the body, but I wanted to show my respects. I didn't answer the man with words. I nodded my head and waited in line to see the body. I looked around and saw the people mourning. There were many young people there who looked shocked and confused. They didn't understand how someone so young and full of life could end up dead. I heard gossip from two old women behind me who had said that she died in a car crash. The driver had been speeding and they were not wearing seat belts. The women behind me seemed to be angry because such a stupid mistake of not putting on a seat belt killed the young girl.
Again I looked up at the girl with the blank face. At this point people were watching her and she was watching back even more intently. Her coldness had started to bother me.
When I got up to the casket her grandfather hugged me and thanked me for coming. He gave some trivial advice about driving that many people had told me before, except for when he said it there was more meaning. He had been affected by that piece of trivial advice more than anyone could know. I had finally started crying. I couldn’t control myself. The tears of previous losses, fears, and guilt had been set free.
When I looked down into the casket I saw the girl with the blank face. She was the girl who had tragically died in the accident. Her hat had covered up the damage from the accident. She was dead, but she was still watching everyone and I could tell. She wasn't sad.


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Marissa Medley is currently attending Toledo School for the Arts, where she takes a creative writing class. She writes prose and poetry. She also loves to read and is often inspired by J.D. Salinger and Sylvia Plath.

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Author: Marissa Medley