NEVER ANGELINE NØRTH
PUPPY
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Sara got a new puppy from a landfill. It was squirming around in the trash and she picked it up and it bit her. She decided to name it. She named it Yehoshua the Charcoal-Maker. It had a tiny parasite on its butt and she named the parasite Snowmelt, after her grandfather. |
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When Sara was leaving the landfill, an old car tire called out to her, Oh my gosh! You found Fred! |
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Is this Fred? Sara asked, holding up Yehoshua |
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Yehoshua the Charcoal-Maker hopped out of Sara’s arms and ran off, wiggling down into the curve of the car tire’s embrace. As she walked home dogless, Sara noticed that all the cars that drove past stared at her as she cried, Snowmelt clinging to the front of her skirt. |
GUN STORE
| Sara got a job working at a gun store. She would take the guns out and play with them when things were slow. One time, out of total boredom, she stuck the long barrel of one of the rifles into her neovagina and pulled the trigger. Nine months later she died. |
ALWAYS
Sara spent her late twenties in the Always Buildings. There were other men and women and dogs and people who also spent time there, but Sara rarely talked to them. When she was bored, she would wander through the halls, touching the ground in different places. On days like this she would try to open any doors she came across to see what they contained. The Always Buildings had many, many doors, some of which led to rooms full of people, or copper filings, or free drugs. Some of them led to a sheer drop off to the ground from an upper story, or to other doors, doors within doors, each harder to open than the last. Most of the doors were locked, but occasionally they could be opened to reveal beautiful secrets. One contained a red transgender camel chewing a plate of roses, who asked Sara to write a list of the most auspicious moments in her life. This is what she came up with:
1. Going to the library and checking out a book on Risso's dolphin (grampus) with no intention of ever giving it back. Getting home, and passing out, and waking up on the kitchen floor to her dog and five men standing over her in the morning light. It was as if the sun were draped around their necks.
2. Walking through a forest of enormous legs, seeing a salamander on a fallen leg that had begun to rot, and whispering these words in its ear: Please take this knowledge to your grave, dear friend: I love a girl.
3. Crying, laid out on the rug in her bedroom because the one she is in love with seems to maybe love her back, but she is afraid she will ruin it by being too-much.
4. Turning fifty years old, throwing herself onto the floor of her bedroom, sliding under her bed, and thinking to herself, No one owns my pussy but me.
5. Who is the most popular in the woods? The owl, the bear, the clockwise cat.
5. Crying in the shower because she is doing a good job so far with not being too-much for the one she is in love with, but she is aware that the one she is in love with is aware that she is trying very hard, and sometimes slips up, even though she immediately apologizes and the one she is in love with says, It's okay. Being too-much in itself isn't an inherently bad thing but it is understandable if someone else is not up for it. It also may merge into a realm that can feel possessive to the one she is in love with, due to its intensity.
5. Rat-a-tat-tat. The clockwise cat.
6. Crying in her bedroom because there is a ball of heavy wrongness in her stomach in her chest behind her eyes and she does not understand it but knows it is related to the terrible love she feels. To how impossible it is.
6. Candles
7. Candles
8. Candles
9. We are done now. A long time has passed and now we are finished.
The camel was grateful, and thanked her.
What will you do with this list? Sara asked.
I plan on publishing it in a literary magazine, said the camel. Where I will make a million dollars.
Sara giggled to herself but did not say anything.
Never Angeline Nørth is a writer of some kind living in Olympia, WA. She is author of the books Sea-Witch (Inside the Castle, 2020), Rainbear!!!!!!!!! (Apocalypse Party, 2022), and the forthcoming Sara or 'I lived my life as a cloud that followed overhead' (Inside the Castle, 2025). She's online at never.horse.