Author: Isabelle Palerma

Spirits Follow Me Here, Too: a Short Fiction (Part IV)

May is National Short Story Month, and in honor of National Short Story Month, I decided to write a short story combining my interest in tarot and witchcraft with fiction. I hope you enjoy the result. Please be sure to check out Part I here, Part II here, and Part III here.

This next portion might be potentially triggering to some readers, so, if you are sensitive to intimate partner violence or domestic violence, please read with caution or don’t read at all. And remember, I do have resources available if you need helplines.

But falling in love was like falling into a pool – you never know its depths until you’re already submerged. I was drowning, and I couldn’t even raise my hands above my head to show I needed someone to save me.

Yet something so beautiful as falling became as hideous as looking a monster in the eye day after day, night after night. When she first swung at me, I think it struck us both by surprise. The look on her face was pure shock, and when I cried, she begged me to forgive her.

I didn’t know how to form words. How do you say anything when you’re choking on the water from drowning? How do you speak when you’re submerged?

This was no longer beauty like stained glass, but broken like the shards of glass I had swept up all my life. This was the impossible, ugly thing I told myself I never wanted in the first place but here I was, a broom in my hand, sweeping up her sins and my mistakes.

I wanted to forgive Vee, but another part of me wanted to run. Nothing about it made sense. I was entangled in this relationship, but I felt as though I needed to escape it before things deepened darker than a bruise.

It could be beautiful.

But it could be so ugly, too.

And even here the spirits followed me, listening to the tears fall. Listening to me choke on my own failings and watched me disentangle myself from the girl I thought I loved.

Was this avenue worth pursuing or should I escape before I submerge completely?

Isabelle Palerma

This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.

Spirits Follow Me Here, Too: a Short Fiction (Part III)

That night, I followed Vee home like a street urchin or an orphan, and I suppose, in a way, I was. My own mother already gave me up once, washed her hands of me like Macbeth. The blood still stained her hands as well, though not nearly as violent as his, I suppose. My nonna had died – the ultimate abandonment, and my dad, well, who knows what happened to him.

Everything inside me that had felt crushed and stifled was suddenly expansive as the sky and unlimited. I felt like all the furniture of my heart that had been cramped into a dollhouse of an existence was suddenly opened up, and I didn’t know what to do with all of those emotions.

Vee looked at me, unadorned and plain, flat-chested, and dark-haired, and told me something no one had ever said before. She told me I was beautiful, and when her lips brushed against mine, everything inside of me unfurled.

Where I simply existed before, now, I had come alive. Her touch electrified me. This is what drugs felt like, I was sure of it. The slow honey drip of lust before the drop in the pit of my stomach, flipping me upside down like every cliché. My skin prickled with tiny goosebumps, and when she asked if I was cold, I looked at her in surprise.

Temperature was such a meaningless concept. I just felt alive and aloft with something as transformative as love. It was beautiful as every lyric that had ever been penned, and when her lips touched mine, I wanted to write her sonnets and villanelles and odes.

I wanted to kiss her everywhere all of the time.

And we started to.

We started to explore each other. Cartographers mapping curvatures and ridges. Learning hills and rises as well as the valleys and smooth spots. Her hands found my tunnel and explored that, caressing me sweetly as her lips made their home against my skin.

Again and again.

The spirits followed me here, too. I thought they giggled because I found “The One”.

I did not hear the cruelty in their laughter because I was busy falling madly in love with Vee.

Isabelle Palerma

This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.

The Golden Compass: a Short Fiction

For National Short Story Month, I’m experimenting with writing more short stories.

Now, I’ve recently discovered that the United States’ current administration is slashing funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and continuing to ban more books by BIPOC authors as well as LGBTQIA+ authors.

As a result, I thought it’d be important to write short stories, based on titles alone, prompted by books that have been banned. I’m choosing to write based on fiction I haven’t read so as not to encourage the story I write.

This one is called “The Golden Compass” by Philip Pullman.

The Golden Compass

‘Whenever you are lost,” Papa whispered to me, his voice near vanishing in the noise that has surrounded us, “you can find me using this.”

“Using what?” I asked in reply, but before he could answer, I felt the heaviness in my pocket as he had slipped something into it.

I almost spoke, but he hushed me. I almost took out what he had suggested to find him with, reaching into my pocket, but he stopped me. “Not yet,” he said, his tone stern.

And with that, it was as though the northern winds had uprooted him and pulled him from my very side. The chatter, too, that had surrounded us faded to a faint murmur.

I pulled the gift – if you could call it that – from my pocket. A golden compass.

Papa appeared. “Lana, I haven’t even been gone three days yet, and you’re already summoning me?” he scolded me.

How had three days already passed?

As though reading my mind, Papa explained, “Time moves differently when we lose someone. When they die, grief alters the way time flows. Sometimes, days blur together into weeks. Other times, hours crawl agonizingly slow. It can all rush together because there’s no one around to remind you.”

It was weird, but that hit deeper than I expected. Grief had punched a hole in my chest, and I didn’t even know that I had lost him completely. I figured he was just another state away, maybe on another trip.

But dead? Gone? I didn’t know how to process this. And all the noise was back too.

“Were you feeling lost, Lana?” Papa asked, his voice feeble yet familiar. It was as though he were speaking directly into my ear.

“I am now,” I admitted, tears streaming down my face. “I didn’t know you died.”

“Oh, my sweet, death only kills my body. My spirit is in this compass, and that’s the good part. Don’t lose this compass, and you’ll always have me.”

I nodded but still felt disoriented, even though the compass pointed in the direction of home.

Isabelle Palerma

According to several sources, including Reactor magazine, The Golden Compass was banned in several places because of its promotion of atheism and attacks against Christianity.

This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.

The Pigman: a Short Fiction

For National Short Story Month, I’m experimenting with writing more short stories.

This second one is called “The Pigman” by Paul Zindel.

The Pigman

Called me “The Pigman” since I worked with pigs. Told me I stank like one too. Always kept away from people. They wanted nothing to do with me anyhow. Only went into town to do my shopping but noticed sometimes, the shopgirl looking at me extra-long. I figured it was because of the stink.

I wanted to say sorry. She looked sweet. The type you’d figure for an angel. The kind of girl you didn’t expect to see working at a grocery store but want to take out to dinner.

But I was just The Pigman. What’d I know about women?

I had a wife once.

She left me. Not because of the pigs. She understood what it meant to be a farmer’s wife. Naw, she got bored of me. Told me I didn’t have a personality anymore. That it must have dried up when our boy Charlie died.

Ain’t that what happens to folks though? When someone dies, a part of you just goes with them?

Anyway, this shopgirl had sad eyes. She looked like maybe she’d understand some things. Maybe she’d be okay with quiet. Maybe we’d listen to music and hold hands.

I’m not just The Pigman, after all.

“Hey,” I said to her one afternoon after she bundled all my groceries together into a sack. She looked at me with those sad, green eyes. She looked like she wanted to say something back.

“Yeah?” she said finally, her voice soft.

“What do you do for fun?” I asked, keeping my voice low. Felt like maybe I could spook her. I didn’t think I smelled bad. Got a shower before I left the house, but maybe there’s a lingering stink. Pigs are clean animals though, you know, unlike what folks think.

Her lips twisted up into a smile. “I like to dance,” she admitted, “but usually, my feet are sore after work, so sometimes, I just like to listen to music.”

“Maybe,” I said, then hesitated. I gnawed the corner of my cheek. “Maybe we could listen to music together some time. I’ve got a good little setup. Nothing too fancy, but some keen speakers. A decent sound system.”

“Yeah?” she answered back. “I think I’d like that.”

I nodded. “Great. Stop by my farm. It’s the only one on top of the old hill. You’ll find your way.”

“Hey,” she called as I was leaving, “what should I call you?”

I prayed she wouldn’t call me Pigman – not to my face or behind my back.

“How about my name?” I suggested. “It’s been years since anybody’s had the decency to do that.”

Her smile widened. “Of course I’d call you by your name. I’m asking what your name is, you old goose.”

It was my turn to smile. Maybe she didn’t know me as The Pigman. Maybe she just didn’t know what to call me. “Jonathan,” I told her, “call me Jonathan.”

“And I’m Penelope.”

Jonathan and Penelope.

I could get used to the sound of that.

Isabelle Palerma

According to Kaitlin Oglesby, The Pigman is banned in places like Texas and Missouri because of alcohol use and partying, scenes involving abusive family and manipulation, and due to language.

This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.

Spirits Follow Me Here, Too: a Short Fiction (Part II)

Immediately upon seeing her, I knew she was everything I was not. She let light in places where I had locked myself in the dark. It was a bar, and though Dennis knew I was only seventeen, he also was more than happy to look the other way if patrons chose to buy me drinks.

When she sat down at my table, I had already been watching her. She had been raucous – loud and unmistakable. I saw her at the bar, munching on some of the peanuts Clifton, one of the bartenders had put out before the bar opened. She drank beer from a green glass bottle and spoke in a hearty voice as though she knew everyone, and they certainly knew her.

By the time the band hit the stage, she was already swiveling her hips as though she had grown up at The Crow’s Nest, and for all I knew, she had. Then, exhausting herself, she plopped down at my table. At first, I don’t think she even noticed me. I didn’t have a client and I was doing a spread for myself. A simple Celtic cross.

She had been gulping down a dark liquid from a glass when her bright, curious eyes caught mine. And, as cliché as it sounds, something altered. What was hard in her softened. What was loud became gentle. What could not stop fidgeting – froze.

She slid me a green glass bottle like the one she had been drinking from. It collided with the cards I’d drawn out on the table.

“Oh, Jesus,” she exclaimed as the beer foamed, threatening to spill over onto my cards. She scooped up the bottle just before its foamy head splashed onto the deck, but this girl, this tornado, looked bewildered nonetheless.

She chugged a big gulp of it down. “I don’t even know if you drink,” she admitted, “I just saw you sitting here alone and wanted to buy you a drink.”

I cleared my throat and gestured toward the tarot cards.

“Oh,” she replied, sucking in on her lower lip and furrowing her eyebrows. “Solitaire?”

“I do tarot readings,” I corrected, staring into her intense brown eyes. They were riveting. Such a deep shade of brown, they could almost black. I could hardly distinguish her pupils from her irises.

For the second time, she said, “Oh,” but this time, she sounded startled, “I’m sorry. I know last month, Dennis hired a palmist and some fire eaters. He had to downsize and let the fire eaters go. They got to be too much of a liability. Are you trying to work? Should I go?”

I laughed. “You can stay.” I piled the cards I had drawn and shuffled them back into the fold. I inhaled deeply before closing my eyes for the briefest of seconds. “Would you like me to do a reading for you?”

“Yeah, and how much is that going to cost me? Just a down payment on a new house and my life?” She smirked.

I arched an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” she muttered, “my grandma poisoned me against psychics. Said y’all are a bunch of swindlers and con artists.”

Rolling my eyes, I replied, “You can pay whatever you like or nothing at all. My nonna taught me how to be a witch, and it’s just being in tune with your own gifts. So, maybe next time, don’t swallow the poison,” I suggested.

She nodded, flinching slightly at the barb of my words. “Can we start again? I’m Vee.”

I smiled. “Nice to meet you, Vee. I’m Nikita.”

And the spirits giggled for they knew, this was the beginning of something much bigger than me.

Isabelle Palerma

This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.