The Confabulator Cafe

Author: ajaquays

  • Kate and Tate were Great

    Trying to find the right time to make the announcement felt impossible. Our last concert? What if it ruined the magic for the audience that night? It wouldn’t be fair. Should we say something early so that anyone who’d wanted to make it to one of our shows could try and scrape together a last minute ticket?


    But the show was already sold out and scalpers were already skyrocketing prices, if it was known this was going to be our last concert, we worried that more people would be likely to get taken advantage of.


    And it’s not like we’d known in advance that we were for sure never going to perform again. It had always been a hypothetical one day with encroaching certainty that it would be this tour. But if we announced it, then we couldn’t ever come back from it.


    So we said nothing leading up to the show. We performed that night as if it were the last concert of our tour, not the last one of our lives. And if we cried a little bit more than usual? If we came back for encore after encore long after we usually would have stopped? Well, no one in the band faulted us. And we let the crowd believe it was because we wouldn’t be performing for a while.


    But things had to end and mom was there to remind us it was past our bedtime and shut the show down. We bid the audience a final, tearful goodbye. Our last farewell as Kate and Tate.


    And then the world didn’t hear from us again.

    (more…)

  • Carnival of Farts

    “Oh my god, Alli, I can’t believe you missed tonight, it was the best!”

    Alli’s roommate Becca flung herself down on the couch. Alli didn’t even look up from their laptop. “I was busy.”

    “Busy being boring. That paper isn’t due for like four whole days.”

    Which meant Becca hadn’t touched it yet and would be begging them for their notes in three days. They winced in memory of Becca’s steady whine of just a peek, I only want to see your references from the last paper.

    “I have to turn it in tomorrow since I won’t be in class on Monday.” Excitement thrummed in their veins. It was the Carnival of Farts this weekend. Except it wasn’t a carnival, not exactly. And it wasn’t about flatulence.

    “You never skip!”

    “Religious exemption,” Alli said. They’d booked their plane ticket months ago. It was their first overseas trip and it had taken months of saving every penny from their second job to save for it. But it was worth it. For the first time in their life, they would be surrounded by people with similar beliefs.

    They would be at the Carnival of Farts.

    (more…)

  • Bound in Blood

    Fire rushed down Vivian’s throat and pooled in her stomach, soothing her nerves. After tonight, she would be someone’s wife. She’d never been anyone’s wife before. The tight, gnawing sensation returned to the pit of her stomach. Just a nip never hurt anyone, her granny always said. She’d only had one nip. Over and over again. She took another sip from the bottle.

    A scrape on the other side of the door had her hiding the bottle away and hurrying to the washroom to brush her teeth. She wanted to be minty fresh for their first kiss. For her first kiss.

    “Vivian, darling?” Her future mother-in-law called from the other side of the door before it squealed open, setting Vivian’s teeth on edge. “You’re still in your robe? Darling, you’re expected in the chapel in minutes! Come here.”

    (more…)

  • Like the Sun

    “His smile is like the sun.”

    Everything froze at those words and I looked about the crowded ballroom, trying to find him. The man who smiled the sun.

    He wasn’t here. It was foolish to think that he was, that he could be here and I wouldn’t have known. Still, I looked about the ballroom full of bright gowns and tailored jackets one last time.

    “It’s nothing at all like the sun,” I muttered as my gaze fell on the man across the room who was smiling our way. Smiling at me. And it was blasphemous to even suggest it.

    (more…)

  • The Stylist

    “Nice costume!” The words flung themselves at me, punctuated with mocking laughter.

    This was not a costume party. I was not in costume.

    It was these children in their colorful suits and paisley prints and patterns stacked on top of patterns who were in costume.

    “How do you do it?” I asked the only person in the room even near my age, though she had at least another century on me. Probably quite a few more if her stories about helping Cleopatra smuggle herself into Caesar’s boudoir in a carpet were true. Still, even if it were true, she was closer to me in age than these children.

    “Do what?” Her voice was sultry and low and I knew she had to be high to resist all of this temptation.

    “Keep up with all of the latest fashions?”

    “It’s easy, sweetheart.” She pointed out a girl a few feet away from her that had a similar build to her. “Tomorrow, I’ll be wearing that.” She left me to approach the girl and with a single brush of her hand the girl acted as if they were bosom friends. In the morning she would turn up naked and dead and my friend would have her new outfit.

    (more…)

  • A Sticky Exchange

    Hot pink post-it, found on fridge, 7am: Stop drinking my blood

    Light blue post-it, found on fridge, 9pm: Gross, I would never!

    Hot pink post-it, found on fridge, 10pm: I know it was you

    Light blue post-it, found on fridge, 11pm: I don’t even drink blood

    Hot pink post-it, found on bedroom door, 2am: Did you invite another one in? We talked about this!!

    Light blue post-it, found on bedroom door, just before dawn: I’m not stupid. Maybe you invited them in.

    Slightly singed hot pink post-it, found on bedroom door, 6:45am: You know I can’t do that (more…)

  • Apple Heart

    When I was born, I did not have a heart, so the Doctor fashioned one for me out of an apple. In return, every day for the rest of my life, I was to bring him an apple.

    Until I was old enough to walk, mama delivered the apple to the Doctor, carrying me swaddled to her back so I received the credit. After I could walk, the burden fell on me. Every day, I would go into town, take a left at the dead tree, climb over the crumbling wall, and place an apple in his hand.

    When it rained, I waded through mud. Every day, the mud grew thicker until the water began to pool on top of it. The standing water went from kissing my toes to tugging at my ankles, deeper and deeper each day. The rain would not let up. When it reached my waist and the only way out of the house was through a window, I begged mama to let me miss this one day, what could it hurt? My backside was on fire as I sat in the rowboat and paddled through the town, the roads hidden beneath the standing water.

    I hated the Doctor. (more…)

  • Until Death Do Us Part

    Her hand was soft in mine, delicate and smooth as the day I met her. Not a trace of the spots beginning to darken and form on my own hands. I prayed that she did not look down and notice them. She hadn’t last time, but they were more noticeable now. When she gazed upon the fine lines around my eyes, I noticed a hint of confusion. My makeup no longer hid them, but rather settled into the creases and cracked with every smile.

    I tried not to smile, but how could I? Today I was marrying the woman I loved. It was the happiest day of our lives and I need it to be perfect.

    The words of the ceremony were like crumbling paper in my mouth. Once the vows and promises held meaning. Now they were a rote recitation without passion or inflection.

    Her frown deepened and I could feel her begin to withdraw. I squeezed her fingers and made a harsh, fierce whisper of my love for her. Her smile was soft and hesitant and she searched my face for the woman she’d fallen in love with. I wondered if she saw a stranger.

    After the ceremony came the photos. I longed to be at the cocktail hour rather than forcing a smile to my lips and posing as part of a happy couple. Today everything felt false and wrong. This was not the memory of our wedding that I wanted to hold onto forever. I could barely smile in the photos and I knew it would not matter. Tomorrow, today, I would try again.

    At the end of the night, I kissed her and feigned a drunken stupor. We slept together, but apart. She did not gravitate toward me in her sleep the way she had the first nights. Why would she? This was not the body she knew. (more…)

  • Psychic Call

    Ann-Marie felt a disturbance in her psychic aura. A moment later, the phone rang. She let it ring through to voicemail as she waited for the electrical waves to clear so that she could continue her reading uninterrupted.

    “I did warn you that now was not the best time for your reading,” the psychic told her patron. “I foresaw this disturbance.”

    She cleared her throat, trying to regain the raspy voice she used when doing tarot readings. She turned over the next card, reading the meaning out to her rapt audience. It was the usual reading full of promises of small losses that opened the way for greater gains. She pocketed the girl’s tip after she left.

    She checked her calendar, she had a quarter of an hour until her next appointment barring any unforeseen walk-ins. She dialed into her voicemail. “We need you again.” The line went dead. (more…)

  • Leaving the Nest

    Every nerve tingled down her spine, sending her tail swishing back and forth in uncontrollable excitement. This was the day she’d spent the past months preparing for.

    “She’s carrying a mirrored decorative pot. It’s enormous and looks incredibly fragile, I’m amazed it’s survived so far.” Her father’s human relayed the details of the girl climbing up the side of the mountain. He’d first spied her at the base of the mountain a few days earlier and had been reporting back on her painstakingly slow progression up the mountain.

    The mirrored pot was one of Iris’s favorite pieces she’d collected for her treasure garden. When she started cultivating her treasure garden years ago, her father warned her away from anything that would be difficult to carry, but when she’d first set eyes on that pot, she knew that it was destined to be hers. It would be devastating if her human shattered or lost it, almost as bad as if it stayed in the garden forever. It was fitting that it would be the first piece of her hoard.

    This was her first human. This object would be the first piece that she would use to start her own hoard… or if she failed, the human would be the first piece of her hoard. (more…)