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Weekly Contest #342
Thomas Whitaker almost missed the turn off Franklin Road.He corrected too late and felt the tires catch gravel before easing onto the narrow rise through South Roanoke. Brick houses set hard against the slope. Lawns trimmed short for winter. Driveways cut steep into concrete. Mill Mountain rose behind them, trees bare at the crest. The star sat white against a clear sky.He found a space along Stanley Avenue, angled uphill. Cut the engine. Kept both hands on the wheel.The car ticked as it cooled.He could still put it in reverse.On the passeng...
Weekly Contest #337
I am the Teapot. Round-bellied. Bright. With a spout like a trumpet for pouring delight.I do not take sides. I take steam. I take heat. I take leaves and I make them behave when they meet. I take quiet and clink and a courteous hiss— and I pour out my portions of civilized bliss.That’s what I was doing (as teapots are sworn) when Captain Moon hosted his luncheon that morn.Captain Moon was a Cheesehead—cheerful and wide, with bulging-eyed watching and bulging-cheeked pride. He smiled like a rule, all polished and tied. He loved being host m...
Weekly Contest #334
I was born in the instant metal learned it could sing.Not the singing men make with mouths—but a hymn of pressure, a sudden bright hand closing around the world.The earth bucked. The air went white and thick as goat milk.Something invisible punched down through dust and stone, through the ribs of the road, and the road answered by opening its teeth.I came into myself inside that bite.There are words for what I am.Old words, carried in homes beneath the Hindu Kush, when lanterns burn low, when a child will not sleep, when elders lower their v...
Weekly Contest #333
Cormac liked to think he’d had breakfast just about everywhere it could be had.Plastic trays in Panama, where the eggs were always overcooked and the coffee tasted faintly of diesel. A chipped porcelain bowl of rice and fish soup in Korea at four in the morning, steam fogging the windows while the cook chain-smoked and never once smiled. Powdered eggs in West Germany that came out gray no matter what you did to them, eaten standing up, boots still on, everyone quiet for reasons no one said out loud.All of them fed you. Some even warmed you. ...
Weekly Contest #332
Cormac was standing in the rain when he realized he’d turned the wrong way on purpose.It wasn’t a heroic storm. Just March along the Tennessee/Kentucky border—low sky, steady rain, the kind that soaked you without ceremony. The neon shamrock over O’Paddy’s door bled green into the puddles at his boots. Water slipped off the awning in thin, cold ropes. Fort Campbell Boulevard hissed behind him with passing tires.He let the rain run down the back of his collar. Let it remind him where he was.“Forty goes home,” he muttered. “Twenty-four don’t.”...
Weekly Contest #331
By the time Cormac Dunne found Rick Butler’s street, the desert snow was coming in sideways—fine as dust, mean as gravel. It needled the windshield, blurred porch lights into halos, and made the subdivision feel half-remembered from another life: quiet, watchful, waiting to see who came through.He eased the truck to the curb, engine ticking in its nervous cool-down. In the shell behind him rode three paintings wrapped in foam and tape—cargo he couldn’t deliver and couldn’t abandon. Some restless part of him had finally let him turn off the i...
Weekly Contest #330
By the time Cormac found the building, the rain had settled into a steady whisper on the cobblestones, soft as someone sharing secrets they didn’t expect to be believed.Rue Chimay ran narrow between old stone walls, the kind holding centuries of damp. The bakery on the corner—Boulangerie du Marché—had already drawn in its café chairs, though the smell of butter and coffee still leaked through the seam of the door. Above it, a row of leaded windows glowed yellow — her apartment.He climbed the worn steps with the crate strap digging into his s...
Weekly Contest #324
"He makes me do bad things."“He makes me do bad things to others.”“He makes me let others do bad things to me.”The room holds its breath.Outside, winter tests the windows, and the river listens.A government office in downtown Chicago, 1975. Radiator ticking, cheap blinds casting ribs of light across a scratched desk; the smell of old coffee and damp coats. Somewhere behind the buildings a pewter lake waxes and wanes. Cold air slips through the window, tasting of iron and snow.The woman across from me holds very still. Red lipstick—fresh, exa...
Weekly Contest #322
Private First Class Sanchez tilted his canteen and drained the last spit-warm swallows, eyes squinting against the white-bright Afghan sky. He sat heavy on his ruck, boots dug into gravel, sleeve grinding sweat and grit across his forehead. Oakley’s back on. Heat shimmered. The landing zone roared like an insane machine.Vehicles groaned past in endless columns—engines whining, tires pulverizing earth to powder. Blackhawks beat the air overhead, the onslaught pounding helmets, shoulders, ribs. The smell of hot rubber, aircraft fuel, burning t...
Weekly Contest #308
You step into the sunshine as if you’ve been waiting all year for the very moment. It’s the twenty-first of June 1984, and the Jack in the Green festival spills across the heart of Bristol. The clatter of boots on cobbles, the smell of fried onions from the stalls by the Harbourside and the blare of Madness from a boombox propped on someone’s shoulder merges into an ancient drumbeat echoing in the chests of the crowd with every heartbeat. Red, white and blue bunting, the colors of the city, flirts against the soot-streaked Georgian facades. ...
Weekly Contest #299
*Every following word is true. Some of them are about weapons and war - so while the title may lead you down a presumptuous path of sweetness and light (which, assuredly there is in abundance) - contrarily, any conjured images arising from this tale might be considered by some as rated Mature.*When an Army soldier tells you something happened at “oh-one-hundred”, what they mean is, one o’clock in the morning. It was each morning, at 0100 sharpish, when we changed shifts at our warzone warehouse just outside of Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan.Tarin K...
Weekly Contest #294
**Sensitive Content: Serial killers**Nature or nurture?That is the question. Before today, I thought I knew where I stood on the issue but now, friends, I am not really sure what to think.To give you context, a few weeks ago, after Mother passed, I was finally able to clean out her bedroom. The medical equipment was, of course, quite pristine but the smell and debris from her glacial demise was simply overwhelming and it took me days to clear paths in the room.I found the letters in her closet.Even now, it takes me a moment to adjust myself ...
Weekly Contest #260
Tina’s eyes popped wide as the door to her room, with a hushed carpet-drag, opened barely enough to let the subdued illumination from the hallway and a figure slip in. The light was quickly gone with the soft muffled snick of the door shutting with the barely heard careful working of the handle being slowly released, but Tina’s visitor was still there – in the room. Lying in her bed, she could hear him breathing slowly and deeply. Just as she was. Both sharing together the air and the anticipated moment, but only one surviving the night.* * ...
Weekly Contest #258
Susan lifted her phone up from her lap and quickly thumb-clicked three pictures of the balding man sitting on the bench across the playground. Her eyes dropping from the old man to her phone, she switched to video in time to catch him raising up a camera with snubby lens, aiming it at a blonde boy at the top of a bathtub duck yellow tubular slide.Susan’s eyes cut to the boy as he beat his little fists against his purple shirt with a Tarzan yodel before diving headfirst down the slide. The boy popped out of the bottom of the slide with a shri...
Weekly Contest #255
*This story refers to death by vehicular accident.*Karl stood in the cold and dark living room, rooted to the floor with anguish. Chin on his chest. Fists clenched. Eyes silvery with unshed tears. In his mind’s eye, the movie started again.He and Karla were in the 4Runner, heading north on 494. They had left the Nugget pretty late and the snow was coming down good so it was tough to see the road. Karla had mentioned going up Williston but Karl, out of habit, had already taken the right onto Excelsior toward 494. Then he barked a little at Ka...
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