fiction writing

The Ugly Word for Rebecca: a Short Fiction

Ever since I met Rebecca, I vowed to never separate ourselves. To be entwined with her. But to be inextricable to the one you love can be seen as unhealthy, Mother said. So I found times where I’d be away from her. Brief pockets of time.

And yet, even when I was away, I found myself thinking of her. I remember the first moment I first saw her. I was walking down Main Street, and I caught a glimpse of her through the window of the dress shop. I had no excuse to go into a dress shop naturally, but I remember fumbling around and telling Penelope, the dressmaker, something about my mother’s upcoming birthday. I had muttered something about wanting to surprise her with a dress, but the whole time, my eyes were on Rebecca.

She didn’t even look like she belonged there. Her gaze haunted me, and I suppose Penelope noticed the way I stared, my eyes lingering over Rebecca. She chuckled a bit, and then acknowledged my brazen desperation, my lascivious desire. “That’s Rebecca,” Penelope told me at the time, “bring her home if you’d like.” Shaking her head, she added, “The girls these days think wooden mannequins like Rebecca are outdated.”

Mannequin?

What an ugly word for my queen.

I ignored the jab and bought my mother’s dress, the pretense under which I came to see my newfound partner. Once purchased, I scurried out and hastened home.

Of course, Mother turned up her nose at Rebecca. Mother has always been a snob. I supposed Rebecca wasn’t haute couture enough for her, in her simple tea-length dress, but I found her stunning.

Mother and I still lived together, but she often stifled me, tutting at my choice in books or television. Sometimes, turning up her nose in the food I brought home from the grocer.

But now, Rebecca.

I put my foot down. I told her I loved her and I loved Rebecca. That she had to respect our love.

She scoffed but did not reply.

Finally, I heard her mutter something about wooden mannequins under her breath.

There was that ugly word again. Mannequin. Rebecca and I retired to bed early that evening.

I touched her tenderly as we lay in bed. On her back, she stiffened as I murmured, “I noticed you didn’t touch your dinner.”

Reproached by her silence, I kissed her cheek and said good night.

The next morning, I helped Rebecca out of bed. It was cold outside, so neither of us felt like getting up, but we knew we needed to. I brought her tea, but she didn’t drink it. I offered her coffee, but she wouldn’t speak.

Finally, as the three of us sat at the table, Mother suggested I get groceries before the snow started coming down worse.

I looked toward Rebecca, hoping she would join me – or at the very least, acknowledge me going into the snow storm. She punished me with silence. I hugged her tightly before I left.

I whispered to her, “I love you.”

The ensuing silence stung and as I reached the door, I wiped the tears from my eyes as she stared at me blankly. It was as though she had no emotions toward me whatsoever, but I knew that couldn’t be the case.

We’d shared such a connection.

“I’ll be home soon,” I assured her.

Mother rolled her eyes.

***

As I unpacked the brown paper bags from the back of our station wagon, I smelled the smoke. Mother must have found some firewood around back and made a fire.

A part of me was relieved. The warmth would be nice.

I placed the bags on the Formica counters in the kitchen and began to organize the groceries, inhaling the deep woodsy smell as I did. Jars of pickles and blocks of cheese. Deli meat. Loaves of bread. Eggs. Cartons of milk. Everything I could think of.

I didn’t remember anyone dropping off firewood yet this year, it occurred to me, as I was putting the deli meats in the refrigerator. Then, I grabbed a jar of pickles, ready to pack them away until we needed them when I thought to check on my mother and Rebecca. That’s when the thought occurred to me.

The ugly thought.

The one I kept telling myself not to think.

How Penelope told me and my mother told me and how everyone laughed at me because Rebecca was a wooden mannequin.

And in that moment, I remembered without a shadow of a doubt we didn’t have firewood.

But we had an ax and my girlfriend whom my mother despised.

The only thing left when I got to the fireplace was my mother prodding Rebecca’s head deeper into the fire. My beloved’s eyes twinkled from the flames as my mother giggled with glee.

“Turns out,” my mother said, laughing, “your girlfriend is good for something.”

Isabelle Palerma

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

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 and Part II here.

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.

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 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.

Draw me a Star: 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 first one is called, “Draw me a Star” by Eric Carle.

I hope to do more.

Draw me a Star

They look like pinpricks, tiny little studs in a giant blue-black velvet canvas, and after so many nights of staring at them, Katherine looked at me and said simply, “Draw me a star.”

I didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t spoken in three months, and she sat there, staring at me like nothing unusual had happened. “You can draw me a constellation or a single star. I don’t care,” she continued, “just draw me a star.”

I looked at her, dumbfounded. “I just… you still speak?” I finally managed to squeak out.

“Of course,” she replied. Katherine was always the flippant type, but when someone falls silent for a quarter of a year, and then merely demands a drawing of a star, you’d be struck stupid too. But I wasn’t going to ignore her wishes. I took out a piece of paper and sketched the most beautiful star I could.

I  made it glisten as best I could against the grain of the page, painting the page in cobalts and pthalo blues. Painting the star in metallic sheens, making it sparkle and glow.

I wanted Katherine to have the best star. After all, I didn’t know when she’d speak again.

As the paint dried, her eyes dimmed. I felt her gaze lose focus.

I wondered if I had lost her again.

“Katherine?” I said.

She smiled sweetly, but it was a distant smile.

My beautiful wife was gone again – like an astronaut on a space mission beyond where I could reach her.

I drew her a star, and she clung to it, but she herself was unreachable.

Isabelle Palerma

According to a March 2025 article by Lisa Tolin for Lit Hub, Draw me a Star is banned in school districts in Florida, Iowa, and Texas, and because of a naked couple meant to represent Adam and Eve have been supplied with paper clothing in other school districts.

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