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Weekly Contest #329
I’ve been dead for fifty-six years, but I’ll tell you the truth: nothing in the afterlife prepared me for the chaos of a poorly arranged thrift store. When the last customer shuffles out, and the staff clicks off the lights, I rise through the linoleum floor, like an avenging retail superhero, minus the detestable spandex, of course, and get straight to work. Sweaters and tops need to be sorted by color, not size; coffee mugs need to be arranged by season. It's nearly Christmas now, so snowflake and Santa cups will be front and center. Shoes...
Weekly Contest #328
I remember the girl by the creek, though her face is always blurred around the edges, like the light was too bright that summer. I can still see the way she stood on the rocks, hair stirring in the warm breeze, watching me with a quiet patience I didn’t understand at the time. We were seven going on eight. She had the same soft, white-blond hair, the same furry caterpillar eyebrows, straight and stubborn above her eyes. But her eyes were softer than my sharp blue, and her smile stretched wider across her face than mine ever could. Back then,...
Weekly Contest #327
She woke to sunlight in her salt-and-pepper hair and a cat staring at her. For a moment, her mind was lost in the damnable fog that covered her from time to time. “Good morning…” she crooned, reaching down to stroke his head. Pause. Brow wrinkle “…Precious?” The cat froze mid-blink. Precious was the name of a Guinea pig his Lady had cared for back in 1953. She laughed, a thin, tinkling sound, much like teacups knocking together. “Oh, hush, of course I remember you,” she assured him. She absolutely didn’t. From its far corner hiding place, th...
Weekly Contest #326
The comet was supposed to be so far away that no one would see it without special telescopes, especially as it passed behind the sun. Just another icy wanderer skimming the solar rim, the news said. Stella had laughed uproariously the first time she heard about it, until tears rolled down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop. Her stomach muscles cramped from gasping for air, the helpless kind of laughter that comes from a world gone mad. People were losing their ever-loving minds over a rock they couldn’t even see. Now there were cosmic cleansing t...
Weekly Contest #325
Kalida’s nimble fingers flew over the keyboard, solid square fingers, naked of any fashionable adornment. She had work to do. Serious work. One hand nudged her oversized, colorful plastic glasses higher up her nose as she tucked a strand of pink curly hair behind her ear. Her fingers suggested hard work, but the rest of her, those perpetually arched brows and wide eyes, belonged to a dreamer. She never felt fully dressed unless every color was represented in her daily outfit, and the more texture or glitter, the better. Her desk was an altar...
Weekly Contest #324
The Sea Was Finally Quiet Not placid, nor apologetic, just eerily quiet, as if it had finished shouting, curious about what I’d do next. The boat rocked. Listless, broken, tired as I was, each rise and dip was gentle enough to make me forget, for a few heartbeats, that I was alone. She sat low in the water, heavy from the night’s storm. Mast snapped, sail gone. I dipped out water with my shoe, one scoop at a time, the way daddy taught me when the bilge quit. Every splash over the side felt like proof I wasn’t done yet. Salt stung the raw pl...
Weekly Contest #323
The trash can of warm water steamed faintly at the front of the church. Women filed past it, dipping pitchers into the surface and carrying their portion back to their small tubs. The men performed their ritual in the back, away from the women's section. Even though most women wore very long skirts or dresses, legs were a distraction. The room was hushed; the silence itself was part of the ritual. Basins were placed gently on the tile floor. Shoes slipped off, stockings rolled down. She could see all of this from her place in line. She had g...
Weekly Contest #321
Grandma keeps the quilt in the cedar chest at the foot of her bed, along with her passports, birth certificates, and old pictures, as if moths could get in and steal her identity. I roll my eyes at the thought, grinning a bit. “Careful with the hinge,” she says, even though I've opened this chest a hundred times and I know about its creaky hinges. The lid gives a soft sigh; cedar, old, familiar scents drift up. Vintage clothing I know of is buried at the bottom: some of her wedding dress, tiny baby clothes, picture albums with their smell o...
Weekly Contest #312
Midnight Buddy Her face was lit by the glow of her laptop, a gift from son number two. It etched the wrinkles and frown lines on her face more sharply than daylight ever dared. Everything about her reflected her age, shoulders softly bowed, gnarled fingers resting near the keys, close-cropped gray curls haloed around a serious face as she stared, bespectacled, at the screen. Somewhere a clock ticked. The tea kettle rattled as water neared its boil. Soon, a thin whistle would rise to announce her evening ritual. She knew better than to brew ...
Weekly Contest #298
The Blue Elephant I scraped up another thick layer of what looked like cat feces with the paint scraper I’d found in the top kitchen drawer—could’ve been dog crap, though. I had gloves, an N95 mask, a headband already wet from forehead sweat, and Pine-Sol-soaked rags lying about on the worst areas of the floor. Pine-Sol, my least favorite cleaner, remained the only brand stocked in the small desert town. Its noxious scent barely covered the cat pee smell of the six feral cats that had made my mom’s home their home. The cat boxes had become ...
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