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Weekly Contest #367
The Crucible of AmbitionThe Hancock Middle School conference room in the heart of Maine felt charged with a terrifying gravity. For three decades, my professional life had been a treadmill of hopeful applications and formulaic interviews. I was trapped in a weary recitation of practiced answers, a striving figure chasing a secure foothold—a guaranteed portion of the American promise. I answered the familiar queries on pedagogy, IEPs, and classroom management with the smooth, rehearsed confidence of a man who had mastered the dance of self-pr...
Weekly Contest #366
KICKS!Daniel sat in the corner booth of Frankie’s Diner, a spot chosen because it offered a clear line of sight to both the door and the kitchen. Cracks spiderwebbed across the vinyl, which smelled of spilled coffee and stale grease. It felt comforting in a predictable way. He wore his favorite flannel—a faded green hand-me-down from an uncle he’d only met twice. The fabric felt soft, and the sleeves hung long enough to shroud his hands and the weight of cold metal in his pockets.He gripped a heavy ceramic mug. The coffee inside tasted black...
Weekly Contest #365
The Vent"He doesn't care about the family; he just wants the deed! Taking care of Mom doesn’t give him the right to steal our home. Why can’t you see that? You’re giving him everything and throwing the rest of your kids away."Through the rusted metal slats of the hallway vent, the voice cut through the low, electric hum of the old refrigerator downstairs like a shard of glass. David froze. The damp washcloth meant for his mother’s brow hovered over the ceramic basin, the toxic words bleeding up through the floorboards like rot and turning th...
Weekly Contest #364
The Ghosts of Black Creek The autumn of 1915 brought a bitter chill to the valleys of Virginia, carrying with it the distant, muffled echoes of a new war raging across the Atlantic. But for Julian Vance, sitting on the creaking porch of his isolated farmhouse, there was only ever one war. For fifty years, Julian had lived in the shadow of a ghost. In 1865, he had been a Major in the Army of Northern Virginia. Unlike his peers, Julian had never worn the grey uniform with pride. He was a man torn; he loved his home, but he despised the instit...
Weekly Contest #363
CW: Contains implied sexual abuse, coercive control MAESTRO OF SILENCEThe latch of the front door clicked shut at exactly five o’clock on a grey Wednesday morning—a sharp, sudden note that cut through the silence like a wire snapping under too much tension. It left a vacuum in its wake, a freezing draft that crawled straight up the staircase. On the hall table, propped against a cold ceramic teapot, Clara left her keys resting on a single sheet of paper. She hadn’t taken much: a battered suitcase, a winter coat, and twenty years of unvoiced ...
Weekly Contest #362
The Last Meal The late afternoon sun baked the interior of the Ford Country Squire, turning the scent of stale tobacco and old vinyl into a thick, suffocating fog. Marge sat with the engine idling, parked in the furthest corner of the grocery store lot, safe behind a wall of overgrown hedges. She breathed in short, shallow gasps, a ragged sound that competed with the rhythmic ticking of a faulty dashboard clock. A brown paper bag rested on her lap—heavy, its bottom darkened by transparent circles of hot grease. She adjusted her mirrors to sc...
Weekly Contest #360
The Fiction Between the LinesThe air in the luthier shop was heavy with the comfort of hot hide glue, beeswax, and centuries-old spruce. Outside, the rain lashed against the frosted glass of the front door, mimicking the plucked string sound of a muted pizzicato on the roof. Inside, the back room remained a sanctuary of amber lamplight.AaronJames sat at his workbench, meticulously cleaning the channel of a custom mandolin top. Across the room, tucked into an oversized leather armchair, twenty-year-old Alysha curled into a tight ball, her ske...
Weekly Contest #357
“But Thanksgiving is more than eating, Chuck…Those early Pilgrims were thankful for what had happened to them, and we should be thankful, too. We should just be thankful for being together.”—Marcie. At the last Labor Day picnic celebration, we all gathered on the large backyard deck of our oldest sibling. It seemed reasonable for the rest of us five siblings to have family celebrations where there is more than enough room to accommodate children, nieces, nephews, significant others, and a friend or two. This would usually mean a headcount of...
Weekly Contest #355
D-o-N-ot-A-skThe paper was a pale, construction-paper green, the color of a mint that had sat too long in a grandmother’s glass dish. In a drafty classroom in 1960s Bridgeport, Miss Keller handed them out with the solemnity of a priest distributing communion wafers."This is your life," she said, her voice echoing against the chalkboard. "This is where you came from."She was a master of the board, using different-colored chalk to distinguish the hierarchy of existence: white for the children, yellow for the parents, dusty blue for the grandpa...
Weekly Contest #352
Henry and Mikey stood before the red-brick maw of Harding High. They had been a pair since the fifth grade, a pact made in the dirt of the elementary playground. Mikey viewed it as a simple friendship; Henry saw it as a mathematical necessity. Mikey was flesh and bone, but Henry’s most loyal companions were the digits and shades that crowded his vision. “You’re an eleven, Mikey,” Henry said, his voice competing with the roar of the school buses. “Always an eleven.” Mikey adjusted his backpack, his eyes tracking a group of cheerleaders. “Beca...
Weekly Contest #351
The Shared Root The spade hit something that didn't ring like stone or crunch like pine. It thudded—a wet, heavy sound that vibrated up the hickory handle, traveled through my tensed forearms, and settled deep in my collarbone like a dull ache. Under the porch, where the air tasted of saltpeter and the dry, metallic dust of dead crickets, I stopped. My breath came in ragged shudders, the kind that made my ribs feel too small for my chest. It was my turn to bleed for the inheritance. Every Elder since the Civil War had demanded this ritual: ...
Weekly Contest #350
This story is about a little girl who survives a car crash. Sylvie’s Light The hospital room feels cold. Strange and shadowy. For two years—ever since the car slammed into us and sent us tumbling down the steep hill—I have lived in the dark. In the Before Time, my world felt sharp and bright, like a fresh-peeled orange. Fluffy clouds danced across a blue sky so wide I couldn't see the edges. The sun made the sidewalk warm under my bare feet. Now, the world feels like a heavy wool blanket pulled over my head. I lie still in the bed and f...
Weekly Contest #349
The Library of Lost DaysToday is April 31...Julian stood before the dry marble basin, his fingers tracing the smooth stone where he would soon etch their final deadline. The fountain at 42nd Street didn't flow with water; it flowed with time, or at least the jagged, calcified memory of it.In the Old World—the one buried under two centuries of carbon debt and the white crust of the Great Calcification—the date was a mathematical ghost. In this world, where the seasons had long since melted into a singular, grueling kiln, time was a fluid hall...
Weekly Contest #347
The Silence of Lies The kitchen air pressed. It was a suffocating blend of stale nicotine and the sharp, clinical sting of antiseptic—the twin scents of our mother’s long, slow surrender. My sister stood across from me, her knuckles white as she gripped the edge of the laminate table. She had a look of contempt. Not just annoyance. It was a harsh disguise of morality, the kind people wear when they are terrified that the floor beneath them is actually a trapdoor. She took one more puff of the cigarette, concluding a moment of tension, gathe...
Weekly Contest #345
The Silver KeyThe fluorescent hum of the 7-Eleven was a low-voltage snarl, the only thing keeping the silence from swallowing the room. Behind the counter, Toni watched a moth batter its powdered wings against the glass of the jerky case. The creature didn't know it was a prisoner. It had made a frantic, blind choice to chase the heat, forgetting the narrow gap where it had slipped in. Now, it lived as a captive of its own instinct. To stay was a slow torture; to keep beating against the glass was a quiet suicide. It refused to move in a dif...
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