Espresso Stories, 6/20/11--7/10/11

How to make perfect rice...how to change a diaper...how to make love to a woman...how to propose...how to live. Who needs parents to guide you when you have the google search engine?


"I'm sorry, but your music sounds like gibberish to me..."
"It's alright, it's suppose to sound that way to anyone over seven.""Oh...I'm not sure if that make me the genius or you..."


These summer days may be the hottest time of year, but I've never felt so cold.


 She wondered if he would care if he knew how much she always objectified him.


"What would you do if all the people in the world disappeared?"
"I don't know. Probably play my clarinet."


Just so you know, I always care about you more than I let on.


 Perhaps it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but the same didn't apply for hope.


"Does salad count as a midnight snack?"
"Does pluto count as a planet?"
"..."
"...go get the ice cream, I'll run and get the chocolate."


I love you because if I told you I was leaving you for your own good you would call me out on my bullshit.


She began to believe that her awareness of how pseudo intellectual she really was made her at least a bit intelligent.


‎"You know, my medicine is going to run out--and I'm not going to take it anymore."
"Fine." He took off his wedding ring, "Then this is going to end, because I can't take you anymore."


 He had always assumed that the advice "Speak softly and carry a big stick" was suppose to be applied to getting layed.


Fine. I won't call you crazy. But you have to admit that there's something alarming when there's more of a chance that you're talking to yourself than talking on the phone.


As she tumbled through the rolling hills of grave-markers and and flowered tomb-stones, she watched from the corner of her eye the man talk to his closest friend about finally creating a college-fund for his daughter. She wondered if that sudden crack of thunder above them meant that the friend approved.


Standing in the bathroom, she stared down at the number on the scale. Her weight hadn't been this low in years, but her spirits weren't an ounce lighter.


Like a wounded gazelle the woman let herself be dragged into the crowd of gossip-queens and pregnant-teens, wincing as hands dragged themselves harshly through her hair, nails scratching her scalp.


He was born at 2 in the morning in the back of a cab underneath the Perseid meteor shower, and his momma named him Elvis because she said that nobody named Elvis ever led an uninteresting life.


He was the kind of kid who would give up his taste buds in exchange for a Klondike bar.


"That's what SHE said... to the paraplegic!" "Dude, I'm a paraplegic." "Seriously? I thought you were a Swede."


because not even ke$ha shines as much as you, and she pukes glitter.


Ke$ha can say what she wants, but the best dance parties are held over video chat, five thousand miles away from home, and completely sober.


there's nothing quite like the feeling you get, standing in front of the gaysian cult that is your friend group, and proclaiming that at long last, 'we are the new normal'.


As trying to explain english slang to the 4 non-native speakers grew frustrating, it turns out that duck-duck-goose really brought them all together in a mix of grass-stains and muddy knees.


She was drinking wine from a plastic cup and she had never felt so classy.


she woke up on a mattress is an unknown basement with fingers running through hair and the sound of humming buzzing through the air. she had never slept so well in her life, and never will again.


She didn't believe in love-in-real-life, because all the relationships that started with "Once upon a time..." ended with, "And that's how I caught him with another woman...oh, and one time a man."


If an idle mind was the devil's playground, then hers was Satan's fucking carnival, complete with a merry-go-round and everything else.


As she licks the remnants of melted, stolen chocolate from her finger-tips, and hopes the Icee stain on her shirt hadn't set, she secretly knew that if her sister ever came to her for help, she'd be there.


We all write for different reasons, but we all know that the best thing about these little stories is the chance to be somebody else for twenty-five words (or less).

Espresso Stories, 6/12/11

"What do you think?" "...what were you THINKING?"


In my dreams someone told me I was beautiful; oh, how our fantasies deceive.


She never let herself get too close to the edge because something inside of her just made her feel like

jumping.


‎"Stop being a whore." She moaned softly into his lips.
"You first."


Regret hating someone, leaving someone, not getting to know someone, but don't regret loving someone. Love should never be regretted.


nothing can quite fill the places where i loved you, and i hate that.


She fell back in bed with a sigh. A girl in pink pajamas could never save the world.


‎"I'm sorry, but I can't." I hung up the phone before she could protest. With girls like that, the truth is the greatest and least you can give them.


"Mommy, when we die, do we turn into ghosts?" "No, no, honey. When we die we turn into angels. When we're forgotten, then we turn into ghosts."


 Passion made her want to tear the lips of her lucky target; love made her want to sew back his heart.


The difference between living around people and living with them was that one was easier, but the other worthwhile.


 All he wanted was to be told he was beautiful. graceful. pretty. but those aren't compliments fit for a boy.


Distance made her feel like someone could actually love her. 5000 miles of imagination.


Stupid humans. Thought Gravity. They'd never know how misunderstood he felt.


Gravity may be the only thing keeping you down, but it's also the only thing keeping us together.

Espresso Stories, 5/29/11

All he really wanted was to be free to die in the arms of the man he loved.


She was sure that salad would fill the voids in a way that ice cream never had.


She never really understood the concept of rings; she figured that if you wanted to make something yours you just had to pee on it.


Nobody ever woke up and said, "You know what would make the world better? Helicopters." They're just the platypus of industrialism.


Why did Pinocchio want to be a real boy so badly? I know for a fact being a real girl isn't all it's cracked up to be.


He slipped notes filled with ideas between the cracks in the sopha, hoping that someday people would find them while watching the mind numbing tv.


he wanted to graduate from high school with style. so he wore a morphsuit.


even though i don't question it's true, i never understood why people enjoy kissing so much. what's the evolutionary logic behind humans putting their mouths together as part of courtship?


"Well, the woman wears white, and the man wears black, and then they exchange bits of gold in front of a man in a robe." "What a strange mating ritual. I'm glad our species is more sensible."


Nothing. is more romantic than exchanging potentially deadly bacteria under a full moon.


sometimes, when angst isn't enough to get you notcied, y'just gotta get happy.


In the end, we're just two people trapped together on a desert island. We can work together, we can ignore each other and fend for ourselves, but we're each other's fates, for better or for worse.


he had to wonder what had become of the world when the seven-year-old girl quipped a "that's what she said" joke.


Bi lesson #1: Never tell the boy you're with that he reminds you of your ex girlfriend. 


She would hold his hand. Just for now. Just until he needed her to let go. Just until she could make it on her own.


--Christie, Patti, and Julie

Espresso Stories, 15 May 2011

Better than swag? Yes. Much better than swag.

someday we're all going to let someone else take care of our problems, and even if the world collapses, no one's going to do a thing.

He brought the knife down to end it all, not yet realizing that "it" was only just beginning.

You know what I love about the 21st century? The fact that a 1% minority of a third world, extremely macho country can demand the right to be human and get it. unanimously.

‎"SHE. STARTED. IT." "And you continued it."

She logged off her facebook for the last time; and only hoped that people would never notice the only picture she deleted.

"This... this is my first time." "Drinking?" "No. Having friends."

Quietly, he placed the rose on the ground next to her name. Out of everything everlasting, true love was the most ephemeral one he ever knew.

"What's ephemeral mean?" "It means you're gonna die."

It was such a small coffin. Such a small coffin. Meant to hold just a baby. One little baby to take up the space of one small coffin. But somehow his mother managed to bury her heart in the same small box.

"Love doesn't go bad, does it?" "Only if it's not refrigerated"

She couldn't compare him to anything else she'd ever seen. He just didn't bother trying to compare her.

The butterflies may get smaller, but they'll never fly away.

Life is most worth living when it's lived on the edge of death. She smiled and put the gun down, letting the bullet sleep another day.

She had waited so long to kiss him...and that was the moment she finally realized she was a lesbian.

The mother sits in the chair patterned with floral to watch the broken shambles of her family fall down the stairs every morning with her cup of earl gray tea.

You know why theatre people are so liberal? It's because they've walked ten miles in everyone's shoes.

Life has given me lemons so long that I'm not quite sure what to do with the oranges.

As he drunk-en-ly spun around the room, he grabbed onto his chest as the alcohol burned through his pipes.
He then came to the realization that he had really, really, /really/, nice tits.
for a flat-chested dude, or course.

"Children, remember this if you remember anything you learned at this school: 'It bit me' is never a good excuse for anything."

sitting on the rooftop, the wind tousling her hair, she was free, finally free, and she couldn't imagine living another moment any other way. so she didn't.

Drinking gave her superpowers; she could fastforward through entire days if she wanted to.

french silk pie was the escape, until of course it showed up in the mirror.

taking a drag, pulling it back. being one of the cool kids at last. hopefully the cancer would strike her before her ego would.

Why do we cry" "to get stuff out of our eyes." "how bout when we're sad?" "to get stuff out of our heart"

Someday you'll be forced to grow up into a nice, respectable whore.

‎"you remind me of honey nut cheerios"
"what?"
"honey, you're a nut."

He was a pimp. Using his words as whores. And all the stupid little girls payed them back with sex.

The world was closing in on me, and yet I kept repeating: I am more alive than dead. I am more alive than dead.

as the coughs destroyed the silence, her body curved inside itself, and for a split second she couldn't breathe between coughs, she swore her lungs were frozen and it was the longest second she's ever suffered through.
but then the next cough went tumbling out and she could breathe again.

"Honey, that dream was a limited time offer. You should've read the fine print before you signed up."

he really figured he shouldn't have asked his hemophobic sister for a band-aid when he got that paper cut.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH OH MY GOD INJURY AHHHHHHH."

--Patti, Christie, Julie, lynn, and Mark

Espresso Stories, 5/1/11

The product of our last three weeks. Enjoy!


Through the torture of the crowds, she still believed peeing in that 0,50 euro stall was life-changing. 


It's like I'm a shark, and you're the reason I can't stop moving. It'd be easier without you, but I wouldn't be who I am.


Melanie had never learned how to mend a heart, but she knew fifty different ways to break a window. For now, this was enough.


with every step she took her mind screamed 'fuck it fuck it fuck it' but she couldn't help but imagine that gorgeous climax.


And as spring blossomed into summer drifted into autumn solidified into winter melted into spring once again, she pondered how long all of it took and how short-lived it was anyway.


The red plastic cup that once held chocolate milk and now held beer fell off the table as she watched the boy dive for the pool cue and crash into the floor. She wondered if, maybe, they had had more fun back then.


it was only when his chocolate-coated drops of hair smashed against the window that she wondered if there was something wrong.


She wasn't sure if it was the chocolate or the milk that tasted funny, but for some reason the hot cocoa in her current country was different than the one back home. Three sips in an she realized- there were no mini marshmellows.


her biology teacher said that people ate chocolate as an attempt to compensate for low endorphin levels. what her teacher didn't know was that her brain chemistry was too far beyond the reaches of chocolate to save.


as she curved her body into the crevice of the discarded tree trunk, the wisps of coiled seductively around the incline of her neck and highlighted her ashen-gray face with the haunting melody of something lost.


like a thrash of theives they marched in their black-outlined-red coats and together they banded together even though one by one they fell to the cold.


as eyes met eyes and he noticed those stone tracks of tears down his face, and the ghosted-expressions hidden by the foot of the bed, he knew that one of them wouldn't be coming back any time soon.


The world is full of ghosts, you see. Most people just like to call them memories nowadays.


"Momma, how do they make the cheese slices the same size?" "The same way you make dreams, dear. By machine."


"You're a big girl now; you can handle sleeping with the lights off." "I know, mom, but what if the monsters are still scared of the dark?"


In the end it was just a rock engraved in metal; in the end it was just another abandoned dream; but in the beginning it was a marriage.


Have you ever noticed how much worse things sound when they have forever tagged to the end? We'll be friends...forever; it'll be peaceful...forever; she's dead...forever.


Whose idea was it, I wonder, that stories can never be real life?


‎"And this is the button you press in case anything ever seems important." "But what if it nothing ever does?" "Then welcome to sales."


one day, your child will tug at your elbow and ask you how babies are made, and you'll say that a computer took mommy and daddy's genes and mixed them together perfectly and out came your baby, and it will all be true.


‎"ba-dum-kshh," sang the percussionist, right on cue. but this time, nothing was funny anymore.


the only things he broke better than jawbones were promises.


it started with a clumsy pinky-promise and ended with a slender wedding band. oh, how times have changed.


‎"He proposed on the swingset." "Aww, back in kindergarten?" "No, just last Saturday."


It was sad but it was true; his hand was the only woman that had never left him.


And as he walked down the wide-open tunnel he realized that he had smoked all his tomorrows and left only the used wrappers of yesterdays still faint from the leaves' burnt perfume.


‎"I don't think you understand, honey," he said laughing into his coffee at my wide-eyed confusion. "We're writers. We write our way into the grave."


"What does a mirror look like when there's nothing reflected on it?" "I'm not sure. What does a human look like when there's nothing reflected on it?"


It remembered everything that had ever happened. Quite clearly, in fact. But when it laid down to rest it all happened again.


"These statues in the rain always make me sad," she said. "I just want to take them inside and sit them by the fire." "Well," he answered, throwing his jacket over the shoulders of the abstract bronze man, "why can't we?"


--Julie, Patti, Christie, and Lynn

Espresso Stories, 3/6/11

"The most basic rule is that they're just a sentence or two, totalling 25 words or less. Less hard-and-fast - but equally vital - are a theme, plot, characters, and narrative development. Everything you'd see in any good story - but short enough to fit into the time it takes to reach the bottom of that bitter little cup, as you ponder on how even the briefest experiences can make life more meaningful." (You can read more at http://espressostories.com/.) Some of ours are admittedly a little long, but here are our collective attempts:


When Maria came back, the stain had moved to under the chair.
--

She pushed each seed into the still-cold dirt, wondering how many more she had to plant before enough of them bloomed to choke the weeds out from her heart.

--

Their eyes met across the dusty road and with each step they took, another car blasted them apart.
--
Amy kicked back the last shot of alcohol, grimacing. The night was long, the party was far from over, and it was better for all involved if she spend it drunk.
--
Bridgette glanced awkward around the retirement center and held her breathe silently as they slowly shuffled past, vowing to kill herself before she got to this stage.
--
Roger knew then and there that he had never been so happy in his ninety-seven years as he had in that moment, Lois' age-spotted hand on his knee, asleep in her wheelchair parked by his bedside.
--
they didn't give her hair until they had to prepare her for the wake--twenty three hours after she stopped breathing, and twenty-three months after she stopped living.
--
"Nice cowboy hat, loser!" But Gary merely tipped his hat at the boys in the corner, winked, and kept dancing.
--
even as her last breathe was stolen by his magical lips the last thing he said was swallowed by the dirt as he hit the ground running.
--
The little girl swallowed the last of her cherry-flavored popsicle, absentmindedly chewing at the juice-stained stick as she sat in the back of the car, watching the hospital smear past the car window like fingerpaint. Today was a good day.


--Lynn, Patti, and Christie

Hey

Hi!
Who are you?
Seriously, who are you?
And how did you end up here?

Honestly, I'm not sure who ends up seeing this blog.
Or what kind of person.
Judging by the name of the blog and the tags, either you were looking for an actual cult, or you're a depressed and/or misguided teen.
I dunno.

But I wonder constantly.

So tell me about yourself
Tell us about yourself.

What kind of person are you?
Why are you reading this?

I can't promise you that we won't judge
But hell
I think we'll understand.

--Julie and the gang

Inaugural

There's nothing more exciting than something new.


It comes in a box, and you rip it open. You dig through foam peanuts. You unwrap tissue paper. You throw the wrappings on the floor, ripping and tearing and unraveling, and suddenly there it is.


You pick it up and admire it, oohing, aahing, feeling its weight in your hand. It feels good there in your hand. It's shiny. It's symmetrical. And it smells fantastic.


You're lost for hours in it-- reading every word on the back, flipping through it endlessly, fiddling with it, figuring out what it can do. You assemble. You adjust. You personalize. And after enough hours of tinkering and fidgeting and boring everyone to death with "Look! It can do THIS!", it goes from being new to being ...yours.


And thus this blog.


The concept isn't new, really. It started, as most things do these days, on Facebook. Nobody remembers who or when, but one day somebody wrote a note. It was emotional, it was messy, it was raw. And then somebody noticed it was well-written. And they said, please write more. So there were more. Other notes, other writers, other ideas written all kinds of other ways. Rhetoric, profanity, eloquence, simplicity, fiction, confession, poetry, prose. Pretty soon, notes started popping up every day-- every couple of hours.


Soon we decided, like so many before us, to write a blog.


 Maybe this blog won't get anywhere. Maybe nobody will read it outside of those who read notes already. And maybe it'll slowly die off. But who has the right to say we shouldn't give it a try? Maybe this blog WILL go somewhere. It's already getting our words somewhere, our thoughts, our ideas. What else runs the world?


So, if you're reading this, welcome. Rip open the box. Dig through the peanuts, unwrap the tissue paper. Unravel our words and get into our minds. Inside you'll find everything we stand for. Maybe you'll find something of yourself as well.


Given with love,
The Cult.


--Patti