StoryWord: balustrade

[scarlettina]

I've mentioned Jay Lake's StoryWords blog here before: he picks a word and uses that word as a seed for a supershort piece of fiction every day and posts it. Today, he very generously invited me to be the day's guest author. So, in a fit of anxiety—and I have little idea of how this particular idea came from this particular word—I wrote this. As for the word, well, all I'll say is that my friend is just plain sadistic. But...sort of in a good way.