REMIXERS HOWAY!!

The first story in the groovy Remix my Lit project is up at the website and available for remixing. Cut, paste, wibble, handwave, set to interpretive dance, do that shwimmy-shwimmy Star Trek transporter special effect, whatever you like, and send it on to them in order to be part of a very special project.

Direct from Remix-honcho Amy Barker to you:


This is a remixable short story. Write a remixed version and then email it to anthology@creativecommons.org.au for your chance to be published in a hard copy anthology alongside Emily and her original work, along with more of Australia's best writers.
All remixes will be published on the Remix My Lit website.

More stories to come.
www.remixmylit.com

Cherished
by Emily Maguire

This girl I hang out with sometimes wears shiny red polish which draws attention to her ragged nails and sunless skin. Silver bikie rings squat on her stumpy fingers.

Her eye-makeup is always uneven. This is not a fashion statement; she does not flaunt a retro-blue-frosted left eye and a goth-inspired-charcoaled right. It is only that she is easily distracted and so will forget to apply a second coat of mascara on one eye or blend the liner on the other. From a distance it looks fine, but up close the imbalance is off-putting.

Her hair is the colour of dried blood. It smells of chemicals and is stiff to the touch. In a photo taken on her sixteenth birthday it is waist length, shiny and brown. I asked her why she changed it but she only laughed.

When she dances or argues she grows a perspiration moustache. During sex, sweat coats her forehead even if the rest of her remains dry and cool.

A tan would disguise the steel-blue veins radiating from her areolae, but she is not the type to sunbathe topless nor is she a woman familiar with salon treatments. She leaves her disposable razors in my soap dish and her tweezers on the basin.

I think her gums are unhealthy, because one time she borrowed my toothbrush and left behind a smear of pinkish toothpaste at the base of the bristles.

I suggested she buy some new jeans after I overheard a mutual friend make an unflattering comment about the size of her arse, but her new jeans were even tighter. The angry lines they leave on her belly make me think of childbirth.

And yet when she checks her reflection in my bathroom mirror, she smiles like she has caught sight of a beloved friend.


My own story, tentatively entitled Alchymical Romance should be available within the next month or so, along with several others. Far be it from me to tell you how to do your work, but I'm looking forward to seeing who can combine elements from different stories into a new narrative.....