BRENDA GLASURE lives the somewhat surreal life of a suburbanite. In the past 5 years, she has ditched her journalistic background to pursue fiction writing. She parcels out the remainder of her time between raising two humans and a vegetable garden, teaching first-graders how to write and washing endless piles of laundry.

                                                      atomic compulsion


So I was sitting on the pier at the end of the docks and the bully wind was pushing hard on my face and I was thinking about the universe and molecules and those crazy electrons that fling around the middles of atoms like a bunch of yappy dogs at the kennel over on Yeager Street and I wondered what would happen if those electrons suddenly got smart - you know sentient - and decided to move around with some hidden purpose.

People wouldn’t know if the purpose was all insidious evil or cosmic good. There’d just be a world full of electrons with big ideas and they would talk to the electrons in our bodies and then we'd have to fight for control of the electrons in our brains. Otherwise, I might be riding home on the bus and watch myself approach Mr. Henderson to kiss him full on the lips.

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© 2003 Brenda Glasure