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Weekly Contest #325
Cassandra could sense when Calvin was getting ready to leave work. He would be shifting his mask, taking off his “Work” Calvin face and putting on his “Home” Calvin face, tying the knots under his straw-blond hair. Even though his office was downtown, and it took at least 30 minutes to get back to their little bungalow, she had a feeling when he lifted his briefcase, said goodbye to his secretary, Trish, and headed to the parking garage. She’d speed up then, fixing everything the way “Home” Calvin liked. Glossy magazines that featured his th...
Weekly Contest #324
You couldn’t tell Chad anything. Well, you could, but he wouldn’t listen. He always had to figure out anything and everything the hard way. He didn’t even consider it a hard way. If you said, “Hey, don’t touch that, Chad, it’s hot.” Chad would touch it, and say, “Yeah. That’s hot.” It was as if every day were his first day on earth. If someone accidentally used an idiom in front of Chad, he would cock his head and look at that person with his striking blue eyes piercing into their very cerebral cortex. “Why would anyone try to make a silk p...
Weekly Contest #323
CW: Horror, implied gore/violence Melanie took her time. There were candles to light and blinds to draw and a bath bomb to drop and a record to play. The undoing of the week came with a specific order of events in order to welcome in the weekend and wash away five days of dreck, the dust and the grit (both emotional and physical) that got under her nails and into her soul. She took her time placing the rose-scented candle on the inside corner and the vanilla one on the edge of the sink. There was a knock on the front door right then, of cour...
Weekly Contest #322
The waiter had those reptilian, once-in-a-lifetime kind of eyes, green ovals with yellow in the center, flickering and jewel-like. He wasn't exactly attractive. It was more that he was enticing, slim in his fitted black waistcoat and perfectly pressed trousers, and charming in the way he spoke with an almost hidden lisp, as if his tongue touched each letter of every word but lingered longer on the sibilant consonants. Think the opening lines of Lolita, except in this case his tongue caressed every “s.” He was courteous, but not obsequious. T...
Weekly Contest #321
Norbert and Bobbin and Reginald and Frisky were all standing with their white gloves on, wringing their hands, bowing and shuffling. They had been taught what to do if the mistress tinkled her little bell or the master bellowed. But not one of the classes had explained how to deal with this type of disaster. Sure, Gilbert and Filbert and Wilson and Narwhal had learned how to press the lord’s boxers and puff the lady’s niblets, and they were well schooled in how to pretend not to see indiscretions of any type occurring directly in their line ...
Weekly Contest #319
I am tired of being called his monster. I am literally exhausted. Seriously, when someone says “Frankenstein,” and then some arrogant little twerp adds, “I think you mean Frankenstein’s monster, the doctor was Frankenstein,” I believe we should all be able to cannibalize that person for parts. You should just call me Frank. It’s much easier, neater, we can all be on the same page of the same classic. And yeah, I know. I know. I am a monster. I scare people with my oddly colored skin and my mismatched limbs. But the thing is, aren’t we all ju...
Weekly Contest #316
The thing is, you never want to take off the mask if you don’t have to. You keep yourself contained, calm, carefully tucked away. All your tendrils in place. Nothing unfurled. You smile with your mouth but not your eyes. You make people feel understood and cared for from the moment you punch the clock in the a.m. to nine long hours later. You are a customer service specialist. The problem is that there are certain people who want only to break your shell. They will try anything, everything, demand your manager, a refund, resolution, restitut...
Weekly Contest #314
Sleep and I? We’ve never been on friendly terms. In fact, sleep treats me as if I owe him money. Or I did it with his girlfriend. Sleep treats me like he’s a bartender and I’ve overstayed my welcome. "You don't have to go home, but you can’t sleep here.” I can’t sleep, and this means that in every city I’ve ever lived in, I know what goes on at night. I know who is up and who is down and which corners of the darkness are safe and which are trouble. I know who I can call and who will be annoyed if I wake them up at all hours. I know what dawn...
Weekly Contest #313
We’d only met the one time. After years of semi knowing each other in the way that the internet allows people to semi know each other. Like, you're not sure if you should call the people who live in the box or your phone your friend or not. Would they be there for you in real life? People who are only available with an emoji or a meme, who can silence you with a button or send you to voicemail. Who leave you on “seen.” We met the one time, at a coffee shop, and we were polite and Ms. Manners would have nodded from her perch above and said, "...
The kiss was like rose petals dappled with dew. Except it wasn’t. Because kisses aren’t like that. Kisses are like nothing you can describe with flowers. His kiss was dark-roasted coffee on a cold morning, a sensation that drives the bad dreams away and sets you up for a new day. Except kisses are kisses and coffee is coffee. His kiss was warm laundry fresh out of the dryer. The fleeting scent of a candle right when you blow it out. Sparklers on the Fourth of July. Frost on the windowsill. And all of that is wrong. Poets want the kiss to be ...
Weekly Contest #312
I know he’s seeing someone else. Don't tell me he’s not. Don’t say I’m imagining things. The worst response to offer in a situation like this is to gaslight the wife. And okay, sure, fine. I’m not officially his wife. Not technically. We didn’t stand up in front of god and everyone and say our vows, but I like to think I came close. Maybe, I should have been prepared for this. The world is a quickly changing place after all.What’s popular one day is out-of-style the next, and with built-in obsolescence it’s anyone’s guess what (or who) is no...
“Please answer questions as completely as possible. Do not use one-word replies. Be clear and concise. Avoid hyperbole and idioms.” That’s what the initial email had said. Along with the rest of the fine print about payments and a privacy form she had to sign with her name between two // which she was pretty sure wouldn’t hold up in court. It had taken a lot for her to get here. Long, lonely nights. Days that passed like a blur. Even when she drank too much java, she fought a lack-of-caffeine headache that never left. Her life sometimes felt...
Weekly Contest #311
You would think they would be back. You would think that the people who leave their: discarded futurebroken heartkeys to locks that no longer open safety deposit boxes that don’t exist… … you’d think they would be back. But humans are confusing. Americans spent $2.5 billion replacing lost items each year and 2.5 days a year looking for things they’ve misplaced. One can almost feel the longing. The yearning. The missing what they once had. Sunglasses. Wallets. Cellphones. You name an item, and someone has left it on our counter. Keys. Coffee ...
It’s a 24/7 diner. It’s a fantasy. It’s a truck stop. I’m a customer. I'm a waitress. I’m the cherry pie. I’ve been writing at night, every night, at the Lonesome Diner for more years than I can remember. The line cooks know my name. My booth is the one in the far corner. Nobody ever sits there but me. I don't know how that happened exactly. There isn’t a plaque above the salt and pepper. But it’s my booth. Everyone knows that. On their breaks, or when the flow of the kitchen eases to a dribble, the waitresses sit across from me and tell me...
Winner of Weekly Contest #309 🏆
The first time they bumped into each other, she was holding a bouquet, and he was giving a bride away. She could feel him looking at her, and she blushed the same color as her peonies and tried not to smile more than the beatific Mona Lisa half-grin she’d had plastered on her face all morning. She'd smiled so much her face hurt. She couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel room and drink alcohol from tiny bottles and frown at her reflection in the mirror in order to flex the overworked muscles in the opposite direction. It’s never appropriate ...
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