Felicia.

“Then when she jumped things went a tad south.”

“When she then jumped things a tad south went.”

“South she went when things jumped a tad, then.”

It was no use—the words in her head fought each other, stubbornly refusing to work together. This was even more difficult than she had anticipated. But one must have dreams, and, having them, must then pursue them or consign oneself to a lifetime of mediocrity, cantankerousness, and threadbare memories of the good old days. Felicia’s dream was to become the nation’s first female armadillo novelist.

And she was so close to being the world’s first armadillo novelist of any sex! But then that insufferable Herschel Torquinst III had to appear out of nowhere at the Iowa writers’ workshop, setting literary circles across America abuzz with his “fresh earthy prose, warm yet dark like a burrow” (LA Times) making everyone feel that they “should have known all along that the Great American Novel could come from nowhere but underground” (New York Review of Books).

Meanwhile, Felicia had become a footnote. She had worked full-time to put herself through school. She had been accepted, if not at a top-tier MFA program, then at a solid one. She had sent manuscripts to every major and minor publisher in the country, brimming with enthusiasm and hope. And now her life consisted entirely o hearing “Oh you’re an armadillo? Do you know Tornquist?”

No, she most emphatically did not know Tornquist, nor, judging by the servile vapidity and self-conscious pedantry of his stories, did she wish to.



//First line by Clever Blond Girl whose name I don't know [someone who does please redact this]
//Other lines by Wayne Aaron Sandholtz.