Enter your email Address

ENTROPY
  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      film

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Beyond the Dolls’ House

      December 13, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Luck

      December 12, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Best of 2019: Nonfiction Books

      December 12, 2019

      Introspection

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Walls

      June 5, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      Best of 2019: Favorite Online Fiction & Short Stories

      December 6, 2019

      Fiction

      Autumn Passing

      December 5, 2019

      Fiction

      Best of 2019: Best Fiction Books

      December 5, 2019

      Fiction

      Vexing the Dog

      November 27, 2019

      Fiction

      A Hurt In Negative

      November 20, 2019

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      On Brendan Lorber’s If This Is Paradise Why Are We Still Driving

      December 12, 2019

      Review

      Review: The Way Cities Feel to Us Now by Nathaniel Kennon Perkins

      December 9, 2019

      Review

      Obsessive, Recursive Violence and Concentration: Charlene Elsby’s Hexis

      December 5, 2019

      Review

      EVERYTHING CAN GO/ ON THE GRILL: A Combined Review of Alissa Quart

      December 2, 2019

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      MOUTH: EATS COLOR and the Devoration of Languages

      January 12, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Penteract Press

      December 10, 2019

      Small Press

      Game Over Books

      December 3, 2019

      Small Press

      Jamii Publishing

      November 19, 2019

      Small Press

      Elixir Press

      November 12, 2019

      Small Press

      Blasted Tree Press

      October 29, 2019

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

        Video Games

        Silent Hill Shattered Memories: Biography of a Place

        September 3, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch

ENTROPY

  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      film

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Beyond the Dolls’ House

      December 13, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Luck

      December 12, 2019

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Best of 2019: Nonfiction Books

      December 12, 2019

      Introspection

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations on a Theme: Walls

      June 5, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      Best of 2019: Favorite Online Fiction & Short Stories

      December 6, 2019

      Fiction

      Autumn Passing

      December 5, 2019

      Fiction

      Best of 2019: Best Fiction Books

      December 5, 2019

      Fiction

      Vexing the Dog

      November 27, 2019

      Fiction

      A Hurt In Negative

      November 20, 2019

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      On Brendan Lorber’s If This Is Paradise Why Are We Still Driving

      December 12, 2019

      Review

      Review: The Way Cities Feel to Us Now by Nathaniel Kennon Perkins

      December 9, 2019

      Review

      Obsessive, Recursive Violence and Concentration: Charlene Elsby’s Hexis

      December 5, 2019

      Review

      EVERYTHING CAN GO/ ON THE GRILL: A Combined Review of Alissa Quart

      December 2, 2019

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      MOUTH: EATS COLOR and the Devoration of Languages

      January 12, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Penteract Press

      December 10, 2019

      Small Press

      Game Over Books

      December 3, 2019

      Small Press

      Jamii Publishing

      November 19, 2019

      Small Press

      Elixir Press

      November 12, 2019

      Small Press

      Blasted Tree Press

      October 29, 2019

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

        Video Games

        Silent Hill Shattered Memories: Biography of a Place

        September 3, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch
Fiction

OF MONSTERS: The Whole No-More-Fiancée Thing by Melissa Gutierrez

written by Guest Contributor May 24, 2016

OF MONSTERS is a series of flash fiction exploring what it means to be monstrous, and each piece, small and silver-wrapped, opens to reveal something different. In Dana Diehl’s “Child Star,” monstrousness is fame, and the feeling that your body is undependable, might any moment split like a seam. In “Jane Eyre,” Zach Doss explores the monstrousness of cutting someone to bits and reconstruction, of a love turned scientific and procedural. Monstrousness is having a fish in your heart, is a series a B movies where we’re just waiting to be attacked, is the pebbling in of a migraine, is being a different sort of person in your attic, is darkness, is senility, is the struggle to swallow. A topcoat of witchcraft. The hint of a tentacle in a pool. Monstrousness is being the person who wasn’t good enough to love. Is the dragon you can’t control. Is knowing how powerless you are.

The series is inspired by Melissa Goodrich’s debut collection Daughters of Monsters, a raw and magical book of spells, an honest yet harrowing look at the wonder and threat of the world.


Six months down the road Laura found out the man she was engaged to likes men. “At least you found out now, before you actually got married,” everybody says, like that hurts any less. Certainly and sure, decades of stiff secrecy feel worse than simply years, but what is time? One day when things go flat will everything hurt this bad and all at once?

At a library, researching similar cases, Laura broke down in tears, feeling alone. A library aid, a pasty teenage boy, approached her. The gall.

“Miss,” he says, “would you like me to get you a cup of hot chocolate?”

Laura looks at him and sees he’s staring right at her, not even sideways snooping at the titles of the books on sexuality and divorce lying in piles all around her. She follows him to the café where, though she knows it’s inappropriate, she confesses that her fiancée left her to be gay.

“Well really,” the teenage kid says, “isn’t it he was gay all along?”

“I don’t know how these things work,” said Laura, a tear rolling down her nose and dripping off into her mug. “People say things like, oh, you helped him become comfortable enough to really own who he is,” she said, shaking her head. “Are we always just a part of someone else’s process?” she asked. “When do we arrive?”

The teenage kid smiled. He spun the Sunday paper on the table so the headings faced the side. “I wish it were like pirates, treasure maps. You follow the line, find the X, dig, and receive a box of gold.” He bobbed his head a little as he spoke. “I wish that everything was so heavy, weighted, shiny, final.”

“If you had a box of gold,” Laura asked him, “what would you buy?”

The pasty teenage boy, Armando, thought about people he loved and whether or not they’d want anything. For the first time in his life, he thought about buying a house.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “A new go-ped, definitely, and something for my mom.”

Laura wished everyone was this sweet.

“I’ve got to get back to work,” said the boy. “Good luck with the whole no-more-fiancée thing.”

The whole no-more-fiancée thing, thought Laura. That’s really what this was. A thing: to have and to hold, to love and to cherish. In a bubble bath that night, Laura heard her mother barge in through the front door.

“Brought you KFC,” her mother shouted up the stairs, “in case you want to eat your feelings.”

Laura sunk beneath the surface of the tub, held her breath, blew bubbles. Downstairs later in a bath robe, she rolled a corn cob in butter and her mother started saying, “At least…”

“At least what?” Laura snapped.

Her mother set her biscuit down, bewildered. “At least there weren’t any children involved.”

Laura rolled her eyes. What would you even talk about if things like marriage, children, happy endings weren’t the point? Still in her bathrobe, Laura booked a trip to France, where, in Monet’s garden, she met a girl named Cantelon. Cantelon was backpacking alone, and asked good questions like, “If you were a star, what would you hope to be named, and what would the scientists actually name you?” On a tour boat on the Seine, a group of schoolboys approached the duo, asking for a phone number. Cantelon scribbled something down on the back of a train ticket, and all the boys squealed, then went to wave to people on the riverbanks.

“It’s my sister’s number,” Cantelon explained. “She’ll be confused and thrilled.” Cantelon’s sister had some incapacitating disease, something that kept her heart from being able to handle very much, something that kept her home and still, so Cantelon was out collecting things for her.

“Experiences, flowers, souvenirs, trinkets. And of course photos she can see on Instagram and things,” Cantelon said, over the last legs of a bottle of wine that night. “But what she likes best,” she grinned, “is stories.”

“What stories?” Laura asked.

“Oh, when I fall in love, out of love, almost meet with death, that sort of thing. The tipping points,” she said.

Laura, tired and a long way from home and quickly getting drunk, asked, “What if you’re in love, and then it disappears?”

“Disappears?” said Cantelon. “Never.” She left a stack of Euros on the table and took Laura’s hand. “Come,” she said.

At the spot where the Eiffel Tower was supposed to be was now a field of giant lilies, as tall as a giraffe. Cantelon bent the stem of one of them so its bell came down close enough to look at, feel, smell.

Laura stuck her head inside. “I hear the ocean,” she said.

“Hold this,” said Cantelon, and the women switched places. Cantelon pulled a tiny jar from her pack and used the lid to scrape some of the bicep-sized pistil’s pollen.

“For Catherine,” she said. “Another tale.”


melissa (3)Melissa Gutierrez is an artist and writer living and working in Northern California. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona. Find her on Twitter @mmgutz.

 

OF MONSTERS: The Whole No-More-Fiancée Thing by Melissa Gutierrez was last modified: May 4th, 2016 by Guest Contributor
OF MONSTERS
0 comment
0
Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
Avatar
Guest Contributor

Entropy posts are often submitted to us by our fantastic readers & guest contributors. We'd love to receive a contribution from you too. Submission Guidelines.

previous post
Autechre – elseq 1-5
next post
Literal Immersion: Narrative Game Design in VR

You may also like

Real People and Fake Friends: Linda Evangelista

July 9, 2015

BLACKCACKLE: “SOME AND ANY” BY LAURENCE EDMONDSON

October 2, 2019

Notes On Motherhood: A Doll For Detta by Caroline Farrell

May 14, 2016

Their Days Are Numbered XXVII

July 7, 2015
Facebook Twitter Instagram

Recent Comments

  • Incognito Lounger This is so much better than the other lists I've been raiding today. I'd add Zapruder's Fathers Day and BJ Soloy's Our Pornography and other disaster songs. Ariana Reines and Tommy Pico will save us...

    Best of 2019: Poetry Books & Poetry Collections ·  December 11, 2019

  • Simmons Buntin You missed a few over at Terrain.org... :-)

    Best of 2019: Favorite Poems Published Online ·  December 6, 2019

  • Ginger Lang Mairead, a heartfelt gift from you to all who read and share your piece, and peace. Thank you for being brave and vulnerable so others in need of healing can feel you reaching out to them. Thank you...

     The TO THE TEETH #4 ·  December 5, 2019

Featured Columns & Series

  • The Birds
  • Dinnerview
  • Sunday Entropy List
  • Variations on a Theme
  • WOVEN
  • BLACKCACKLE
  • Literacy Narrative
  • Mini-Syllabus
  • Their Days Are Numbered
  • On Weather
  • Disarticulations
  • Birdwolf
  • Session Report series
  • Comics I've Been Geeking Out On
  • Small Press Releases
  • Books I Hate (and Also Some I Like)
  • The Poetics of Spaces
  • Notes On Motherhood
  • 30 Years of Ghibli
  • Tales From the End of the Bus Line
  • YOU MAKE ME FEEL
  • Ludic Writing
  • The Talking Cure
  • Best of 2018
  • The Weird Interview
  • DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
  • Foster Care
  • Pop Talks
  • The Concept World is No Longer Operational
  • Splendid Grub
  • LEAKY CULTURE
  • Jem and the Holographic Feminisms
  • D&D with Entropy
  • Stars to Stories

Find Us On Facebook

Entropy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

©2019 The Accomplices LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Read our updated Privacy Policy.


Back To Top