#femme fiction febuary

[uniqueleewritten]

B is for Battlefield

This one is a bit longer (a little bit late but shh) but it’s a fun one! Hope you give it a read through!

Don’t forget you can donate to my Ko-fi to get early access and help support a Black Nonbinary Queer in these trying times

Ko-fi 

The other stories

Story Under the Read more

"Hey, Ellie?" Lil called out as they were walking into their kitchen.

"Hi, Lil, what's up?" Ellie asked as she put another bowl into the dishwasher.

"Wondering if I can help you."

Ellie looked out at the others sitting around Lil's living room table, yelling at the board game.

"Had enough of that?" She asked pointing to the chaos.

Lil didn't even bother nodding, they just continued to stare at Ellie who eventually smiled in return.

"Well, you can help me decorate because that's the last thing to do at this point."

"I'm not good at cake decorating."

"You don't need to be with the yule log actually. Wash your hands real quick and then you can help."

Lil quickly did as they were told and then stood next to Ellie, grateful to be in the room with the person closest to them in height. They for once didn't have to look up when she was talking.

"Ok, so the cake and the ganache are both cool enough to work with now, so you just need to slap it on top and then use this offset spatula to spread it around, ok."

Lil took the spatula, once again amazed that such a thing existed, and then did as Ellie said. Ellie smiled at them before going to the refrigerator and grabbing the tupperware bowl of meringue mushrooms she had made earlier in the day. She set it down on the island next to Lil before grabbing the small bowl she used for melting chocolate.

The melted mixed chocolate would be amazing with the decadence of the meringue. The milk chocolate would add a touch of sweetness to compliment the high percentage dark chocolate pieces, keeping it all from being overly sweet. Something everyone but Lil would notice.

"What are these?" Lil asked holding a white meringue cap in their fingers.

"Meringue mushroom. Or they will be once I put them together anyway."

"Both?"

"Yep, I made normal meringue and chocolate meringue for it. I like the look of both together, makes them look more like mushroom clusters to me."

Lil didn't say anything and instead just stood, waiting for Ellie to give them more instruction. She handed a fork over before pulling her melted chocolate from the microwave and sitting across from Lil at the island.

"Ok, now you just take the fork and make a bunch of lines thru the frosting. Then we have bark on the log."

Lil made an affirmative noise before doing as they were told. Ellie quickly worked thru the meringue mushrooms, attaching the stems to caps with a bit of the chocolate and setting them aside. Soon the two were done and then they went about adding the mushrooms to various spots on the log.

"This looks good," Lil said when they were done.

"It does. Now we just add a few cherries and raspberries and then a bit of powdered sugar on top and it's finished. It will probably need to cool in the fridge for a bit before-"

"FUCK YOUR MONOPOLY!"

Ellie and Lil turned to look at Melvin beginning his tirade, Maya sitting there looking smug. Why anyone went with her idea to play Bankrupt or Billionaire, no one knew but Melvin sure was suffering from the sounds of it.

"Well, let's finish decorating before Maya's fat head knocks your condo down 3 floors."

"I hear the ground floor units have cheaper rent anyway." Lil joked in response.

Ellie snickered at the remark before starting to pour some powdered sugar into the sugar shaker. Lil grabbed the container of bright red fruit from the fridge and handed it over. Working together they easily decorated the cake, Lil placed cherries underneath some of the mushroom clusters while Ellie had placed a few raspberries along the bottom.

Ellie then showed Lil how to put the powdered sugar on top with a shaker. They told her that their parents had always used the mesh strainer to do this part and was a little amazed at the shaker. Lil was constantly surprised at the gadgets that existed to help around the kitchen.

Altogether the yule log looked amazing and Lil salivated at the thought of getting a slice.

"NO FUCKING WAY!"

"THAT'S WHAT YOU GET, YOU FUCKING WHORE!"

"Say it again you little bitch! I'll knock you so hard you might get smart."

"You wanna go?"

"KNOCK! It off you two!" Sheb yelled and then lowered her voice. Most likely trying to get their attention without causing any more noise, for all the good it did her.

Ellie shook her head before turning back to Lil who was doing much the same. They shared a laugh before putting the cake in the freezer to chill for a while.

"Now we do the cleanup and by the time we're done it should be set."

"Cool."

The two listened to the incessant yelling of the others, Melvin and Maya ranting at each other, Sheb yelling at them to calm down and Delphon yelling at Melvin for trying to jump over the table. The normal sounds of family board game night when Maya was allowed to pick the game.

If the games didn't end with Lil winning with skill, or Delphon winning out of luck, then Maya won out of a slow and agonizing torture spree that drove the others to dramatic deaths.

It didn't take long for Lil and Ellie to clean up everything as they worked together. Ellie rinsed the bowls out, giving the melted chocolate one a quick scrub, before stacking them into the dishwasher. While Lil cleaned off the island and wiped the countertops down before getting out the plates and silverware.

"Game up!" Lil called, from the safety of the kitchen still. They hoped the others would at least put the board game away. Maybe they would all have to eat their cake around the pieces and possibly bloodshed if Melvin got out of Delphon's grip.

Ellie set the knife on the counter and told Lil to come back in for it after they set the plates down. She would bring in the cake after she took pictures of it for her social media. She quickly snapped a few, listening to Lil kick the game off the table so they could put the plates down, before grabbing the tray. Lil passed her as they came back into the kitchen, careful not to bump into the tray she was holding.

Sheb was in the games cabinet, most likely putting the game up while Delphon was sitting on the couch, looking far more exhausted than Ellie had ever seen before. Maya and Melvin were standing, arguing about who the real winner was in light of the game ending early.

"I was the winner, you wannabe punk, get over it," Maya said, giving him a push.

Melvin gave a push back, not seeing Delphon's legs were right behind Maya and Ellie knew what would happen before she could stop it. She twisted somewhat, hoping the cake would survive but as Maya fell back on top of her, Delphon reaching out to catch her and Melvin staring in shock, she knew the yule log was done for.

The two hit the floor with a thud and the cake hit the carpet with a splat.

"Oh my god, are you two ok?" Melvin asked as Delphon moved to pull Maya up.

"Yeah, I'm ok." She told them, letting Delphon manhandle her over to the sofa. "Ellie, you ok?"

When Ellie didn't answer Delphon quickly knelt down and looked to see if she was ok, constantly calling her name. Ellie laid there on Lil's plush carpet just staring at the remains of her hard work. The last 4 and a half hours of her life sat in a mess all along the carpet.

"Oh shit," Melvin said when he noticed.

"Come on Ellie, let's get you up," Delphon said, all but picking her up like a parent does a sleeping child, before setting her down on the couch near Maya.

"Well, that's bad," Sheb said, a bit of worry in her voice.

"You're telling me," Melvin grumbled, running a hand through his hair. "I hate cleaning Lil's carpet."

"I meant Lil, actually," Sheb whispered fearfully.

Everyone but Ellie turned to look at the kitchen's archway and saw Lil standing there, the large cake knife in their hand.

"Oh fuck."

"Lillen, let's put the knife back down," Del said, slowly approaching them. Hoping to convince them with his words or stop them from using it in the worst-case scenario.

Maya stood and walked behind him, trying to apologize while also using Del as a shield between her and Lil. She told them that she would go out right now and buy whatever dessert Lil wanted, as an apology and a replacement. Hearing those words made Ellie see red.

How dare Maya think she could just replace 4 hours of work! How dare she think any other dessert would be comparable to her fantastic if not damn near perfect brandy yule log! How dare she think she could just replace the fucking meringue mushrooms!

Before she could stop herself, Ellie grabbed one of the large and decorative throw pillows and hit Maya in the head as hard as she could, sending the other woman falling to the couch with a shout. Before Maya could say anything Ellie was beating her with the pillow, repeatedly hitting her and hitting her and hitting her. Maya all the while yelling at her to stop.

"That fucking hurts!"

"Well, it should! I spent 4 hours on that cake Maya Thornridge! 4 hours!"

"I'm sorry!"

"I used good brandy in that cake damnit! And now it's sitting on the fucking floor!"

Ellie ignored Maya's pleas and instead heard Melvin chuckling behind her. She swiftly swung around and hit him in the face as well, sending him tumbling back into a chair with a thud and an oof. He quickly raised his arms to protect himself from her onslaught of pillow pummeling, not even bothering to try and apologize.

"Don't you dare fucking laugh at her Melvin Craig! You're the one who pushed her! I don't care if she pushed you first! You pushed her on top of me and we lost 4 hours of fucking work and the good brandy I put in there and the good chocolate I used for the ganache and I bought real actual cherries to go on top and you! pushed! her!"

She punctuated her last words with particularly hard swings before running out of steam. Her arms hung low as she panted, her chest and shoulders heaving with each breath she took before she simply let the pillow go. It dropped atop the plates and silverware forgotten on the table, making a loud clacking noise as they bumped each other around. Ellie fell back onto the couch, the fight completely out of her.

Everyone looked at her in silence, amazed that so much anger had come from her when before they had barely heard her yell at someone, let alone pummel them with a pillow.

Lil looked at the knife in their hand before shrugging and turning around. "Guess we don't need this anymore."

[woolf-pack]

WOOLF PACK IS OPENING SUBMISSIONS FOR OUR TENTH (TENTH?!) ISSUE (TO BE RELEASED IN FEBUARY 2017). ARE YOU A FEMME OR NON-BINARY WRITER/ARTIST IN AUSTRALIA? SEND YOUR COOL SHIT TO WOOLFPACKBRISBANE@GMAIL.COM BY 15th JANUARY 2018

>What to send: Essays! Rants! Fiction! Illustrations! Photo Essays! Comics! Recipes! Mixed Media! Collage! Poetry! How-tos! Anything realistically printable in a zine! Feel free to send pieces that have been self-published, so long as we would not be running afoul of any previous contracts.

>Text submissions: Please send submissions of any kind, preferably under 3000 words. We take .doc files, and we edit using ‘track changes’.

>Image goodness: We prefer 300dpi - 1748 x 2480px for A5, 2480 x 3508px for A4. We print in full colour, but this is a print-at-home zine meaning that colour quality is mid-fidelity, so please keep this in mind. .png or .tiff preferred and .jpg is cool too. If you don’t know what any of this means that’s fine too, we’ll try our best to help you figure it out, there’s lots of space to negotiate so don’t let the above deter you!

>Payment: We pay $25 per piece; we define ‘piece’ as items listed on the contents page. We pay this amount because we are self-funded and don’t turn a profit (and $25 is the price of five issues, which should put it into perspective). It was $25 last time but we are trying to just gently inch it up.

>Things that are fine: Language! Nudity! Adult themes! General insurrection! Discussions of Real Shit! Being completely independent means we can publish pretty much whatever we want.

>Things to keep in mind: If your piece involves the use of slurs, we may asterisk them up. If you’re commenting on the slurs meaningfully and in good faith, that’s probably going to be fine. If you’re using slurs to be totes edgy and rustle jimmies, we’ll probably become quickly bored. We also may ask you to put content warnings in text pieces (we’ve generally used them in-text if something super gnarly is coming up), or insert our own. Content warnings are important because they’re the very definition of classification over censorship, and we want the freedom to discuss anything that affects us, like assault or mental illness, and give people the heads up they need when going into a topic that’s tough for them. We will not publish pieces about how content warnings are wimpy and indulgent and are ruining academia, because… they’re not.

>How will it work: We answer all submissions, successful or not. If your piece is a good fit, you will hear from one of us to edit it with you: we work very closely with artists to get everything looking and sounding schmick.  Because we are opening submissions a little later than usual, we will be going for very, very quick turn-arounds on editing; so please make sure you’ll be present, checking emails and ready to collaborate in January if you’d like to be in this issue! We will have a hard deadline for getting pieces finalized. We will also collect details for our contributor page.

DEADLINE

WHEN – 15th JANUARY 2018

WHERE -  WOOLFPACKBRISBANE@GMAIL.COM

[uniqueleewritten]

A is for Art Gallery

Don’t forget you can donate to my Ko-fi to get early access and help support a Black Nonbinary Queer in these trying times

Ko-fi

Story Under the Read more 

"This place is gorgeous, Sugar." Ellie gasped as she looked around the gallery. Sugar couldn't deny it as she and Maya stared in awe as well.

"How the hell did your cousin get art into somewhere this bougie?"

"Maya!"

"Nah, it's a fair question."

"Sheb!"

Ellie huffed at them before walking off, intent on finding Lillen and congratulating them, but before Ellie could locate them, she found one of their pieces. She instantly knew that it was Lillen's because she knew the subject matter intimately. On the wall was a painting of her and her lovers embraced together, dead drunk and sleeping on Lillen's floor.

Ellie didn't remember the when, if it was even a particular when, but the sight of her bare legs laying over top of Maya's with Sugar's arms wrapped around her middle was something that happened far too often when they drank over at Lillen's.

She saw the mismatched way their hair lay as if it was posed. Gazed at the way the street lamps glow shined over them. She noticed Maya's favorite purse thrown haphazardly on the couch. Sheb's coat underneath their heads. Ellie's own shoes in the corner of the canvas. She saw the care Lil had put into each stroke of their brush.

"Thought you'd like this one most."

Ellie turned instantly to look at Lillen who stood there in their pure white suit with a matching coat and a black tie. Their hair was braided and tied back for the first time Ellie had ever known them but there was still a sucker in their mouth.

"You... you painted us?"

"Painted everyone. You three just came out good enough to be shown in this display."

"Everyone?"

"Mel and Del. One of my parents as angels. Did some of everyone separate. One of Sheb and the She-Devil in the workshop, that type of stuff."

Ellie's mouth hung open as she looked from Lil to the painting and back again and again. As if she couldn't believe such a thing was truly happening.

"Don't worry, none of my paintings are being bought, so no weirdo is gonna end up with yall in their living room."

Ellie paused for a moment, as if time stopped for her, before grabbing Lil in a strong hug, hoping to convey how much the painting meant to her. She heard the sound of Maya's heels coming up behind them and heard Sheb gasp as she saw the painting as well. Two new sets of arms joined her in hugging Lil and Ellie knew that they would be leaving the gallery with that painting by the end of the night.