Masturbation and sex were anathemas, especially when we girls broached the topics. We could never talk freely about it with anyone without being condemned—censured to the point of living in ignorance; forever made to dwell in unawareness; stumbling around blindfolded from one room to another, hands outstretched attempting to live in a house built by men that had no clue how to build or maintain or to navigate. Historical romance novels somewhat solved that conundrum; at least, they did for […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing

I started bleeding when I was eleven. I panicked. It’s your period. It happens, mom told me, then gave me pads to stick in my panties. Information beyond that was scant: don’t flush them down the toilet and don’t waste them because they’re expensive. I went to Natalie’s house for the summer shortly thereafter. I was unsure and reluctant to tell anyone so I didn’t. Mom didn’t give me pads to take with me and didn’t tell Aunt. Nat hadn’t […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing

This is not a Dawson’s Creek reunion, I told them as we walked. The former tracks looped into a particularly severe crevice that climbed towards the sky like a tear in the mountain. Small sounds echoed and amplified within like a pyroclastic blast. We exited into more grayness and the acrid stench of vinegar and formaldehyde and sulfur. The wind didn’t purge the smell only intensified it. The ash began to fall shortly after. The grey haze of morning uncovered […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing

We climbed the slippery bank to the now defunct railroad tracks and headed south. The steel from the tracks and spikes gone, torn up for scrap metal long ago before any war. The path dissimilar; doubled, tripled…cloned and yet incomparable. Variables emerged; some noted; other’s banished to the empty where exhaustion ruled. Crossing the trestle or the creek was not an option, not that I would ever want to with all manner of cadavers and calamities lurking in its dark […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing

We argued. It was nothing serious, but still…we argued. Right before. Without exception—we always argued. At the swimming hole, I remembered we debated about what to listen to next after Duran Duran’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger. Cody wanted Def Leppard’s Pyromania or AC/DC’s Back in Black for the umpteenth time while I wanted Purple Rain. Dad said we can’t listen to that music, Cody complained. Uncle’s not here. It’s my boom box, my music, I told him. I brought […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing

Being the outsider—the city girl from Charleston—I had the fun toys, the funky music, the strange clothes, and the smart mouth. I spent the first twelve years of my life somewhat secluded deep in the hills thirty minutes outside of Charleston, three hours south of here; but still, I was considered far too citified for these folks. Mom sold that land after dad died. I was twelve and he was…gone. Now it was only the three of us. Yes, there […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing

Wrapped in the bowels of summer heat and humidity, that day in 1984 started like any other in the armpit of the West Virginia mountains. I remembered it vividly like it was just this morning, because it was. This looks like shit-covered maggots, I told Cody adding a gob of butter and taking a big bite of the chocolate rice he made us for breakfast. I heard that, Aunt yelled from the next room then told me stop using so […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing

Several minutes went by before the pain and pleasure abated and I focused. On all fours, naked, wet, reeking of the polluted mud and creek, I looked into their eyes. I saw hardness and hate, grief, anger, and exhaustion—and four years of struggle from a war no one wanted. Some did. I wasn’t one of them, but we did what we had to to do in order to survive; to be free. I rose to my feet, standing upright, hands […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing

Duran Duran’s New Moon on Monday played from the black boom box creekside. The beat echoed around the short banks of the large swimming hole. Heads back, fingers skipped over the water like gulls’ feet, we floated on used tire tubes in silence listening to the tunes. The brief occasional exchanges between us went silent when the surroundings began to change. Isolated above us, the sun disappeared into an ashen ink blot in the sky. Like a volcanic mud pool, […]

Categories: Writing • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series, Writing