{"id":1540,"date":"2019-10-13T01:28:05","date_gmt":"2019-10-13T01:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=1540"},"modified":"2019-09-29T21:31:56","modified_gmt":"2019-09-29T21:31:56","slug":"sugar-by-christian-fennell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2019\/10\/13\/sugar-by-christian-fennell\/","title":{"rendered":"Sugar by Christian Fennell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Having recently completed his first novel, The Fiddler in the Night, long-listed for the 2018 Dzanc Book Prize for Fiction, Christian is currently working on a collection of short stories and a second novel, The Monkey King. His short stories have appeared in a number of literary magazines and collected works, including: Chaleur Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Litro Magazine, Spark: A Creative Anthology, Liars’ League London, .Cent Magazine, among others. Christian was a columnist and the fiction editor at the Prague Revue. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Sugar<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She walked out\nthe door, her flip-flops smacking her heels, her white short dress tight all\nthe way down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She reached the\ngravel driveway and looked at the kid’s toys, her cigarette burning down\nbetween her fingers. She looked away, somewhere, and took a drag of her\ncigarette. She tossed it to the gravel, toed it out, and opened the drive-shed\ndoor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her eyes\nadjusting to the dim light she walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer. She\nopened it and walked to the workbench and pulled herself onto a high metal\nstool. She crossed her legs, her one foot bouncing\u2014a nervous energy of how she\nwas hinged, much like this place itself. Why won’t you put that greasy thing\ndown and come over here? Why won’t you? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She took a sip of\nbeer and leaned back, her thin milky-white forearms resting on the workbench, her\ndress high up on her long legs, and she tilted her head, the thickness of her\nblonde hair falling to one side and catching the light, just right, and she\nknew it, and did so without having to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looked at her\nchipped red nail polish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looked out\nthe small window. At the scrubby land. At the coming heat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A small bird came\nto the outside of the window. Maybe a starling. She didn’t know. She did once,\nwhen she was just a little girl. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baby, this day is\ngonna be a hot one, it’s comin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stepped out\nfrom under a jacked-up \u201969 Firebird and grabbed a rag from the workbench and\nwiped his hands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He took the beer\nfrom her and took a sip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, don\u2019t take\nall of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She got up and\nwalked to the fridge and grabbed another beer. She closed the fridge door and\nlooked at the calendar hanging on the wall, some girl with less than little on\ndraped over the hood of a shiny red car. They make good money, ya know. She\nopened the beer and looked back at the poster. A blonde, like her. It’s not just\nthe money, it’s the connections. Ya know that, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She walked back\nto the workbench and sat on the stool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He pushed himself\nforward and turned and faced her, his hands reaching past her to the workbench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The small fan in\nthe window rattled and blew warm sticky air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sweat from his\nforehead dropped to her thigh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looked at her\nleg, at the drop, and she put her finger to it, and it ran, like a tear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The smooth touch\nof her dress, moving up, and she pushed herself forward on the stool, just a\nlittle, just enough, a lazy southern cat stretching its underbelly to the\nwarming sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sugar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know, baby, make\nit good, make it right. She looked back out the small window. Like it could be.\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having recently completed his first novel, The Fiddler in the Night, long-listed for the 2018 Dzanc Book Prize for Fiction, Christian is currently working on a collection of short stories and a second novel, The Monkey King. His short stories have appeared in a number of literary magazines and collected works, including: Chaleur Magazine, Wilderness … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-oQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1540"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1542,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions\/1542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}