Chapter Nine – Goodbye is Forever Masturbation and sex were anathemas, especially when girls broached the topics. They could never talk freely about it with anyone without being condemned—censured to the point of living in ignorance; forever made to dwell in unawareness, stumbling around blindfolded from one room to another, hands outstretched, attempting to live in a house built by men that had no clue how to build or maintain or navigate. Historical romance novels somewhat solved that conundrum—at least, […]

Categories: Recalibrate, The Mirror Series • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Serial Fiction, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series

Chapter Eight – Time After Time Jay started bleeding when she was eleven. She panicked as children ought do when they start bleeding from orifices. “It’s your period. It happens,” mom said, then gave her pads to stick in her panties. Information beyond that meager: “Don’t flush them down the toilet and don’t waste them because they’re expensive.” Jay went to Natalie’s house for the summer shortly thereafter. Unsure and reluctant to tell anyone about this new predicament, she kept […]

Categories: Recalibrate, The Mirror Series • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Serial Fiction, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series

Chapter Seven – Policy of Truth “This is not a Dawson’s Creek reunion,” Jay told them as they walked. The former tracks looped into a particularly severe crevice that climbed towards the sky like a tear in the mountain. Small sounds echoed and amplified within like a pyroclastic blast. They exited into more grayness and the acrid stench of vinegar, formaldehyde, and sulfur. The wind didn’t purge the smell, only intensified it. The ash began to fall shortly after. The […]

Categories: Recalibrate, The Mirror Series • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Serial Fiction, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series

Chapter Six – The Song Remains the Same They climbed the slippery bank to the now defunct railroad tracks and headed south. The steel from the tracks and spikes gone, torn up for scrap metal long ago before any war. The path dissimilar—doubled, tripled, cloned, and yet incomparable. Variables emerged; some noted—others banished to the empty where exhaustion ruled. Crossing the trestle or the creek was not an option. Not that she would ever want to with all manner of […]

Categories: Recalibrate, The Mirror Series • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Serial Fiction, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series

Chapter Five – Controversy They argued. It was nothing serious, but still—they argued. Right before. Without exception—they always argued; it was some kind of teenage hillbilly ritual, these arguments. Something that seemed ridiculous and strange standing amongst the ruins now. Before though, at the swimming hole, Jay remembered debating about what to listen to next after Duran Duran’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger. Cody wanted Def Leppard’s Pyromania or AC/DC’s Back in Black for the umpteenth time while she wanted […]

Categories: Recalibrate, The Mirror Series • Tags: Coming of Age, Dystopia, Recalibrate, Serial Fiction, Speculative Fiction, The Mirror Series