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Weekly Contest #363
Mama caught me crying in the barn. This time of morning, she’s usually baking. She come over to me, wiping her floured hands on her stained apron. I kept on milking our Holstein cow, Sugar. “Not like you to cry over milk,” she said, smiling. What she really meant was that I’m not the crying type. Not even the time Pa took a willow switch to me one afternoon for kissing Preston Taylor in this very barn. When I didn’t laugh, but only hung my head lower, she squatted down at my level, absently stroking Sugar’s soft flank. “What is it...
Weekly Contest #362
(Contains references to the Salem Witch Trials) Charity Lester was hanged from one of the apple trees in her orchard. All the townsfolk turned out to bear witness to her death, standing on the edge of her apple grove, the autumn air sickly-sweet with the scent of unpicked Jonathans. All watched the town elders cut down her lifeless body and place it in a crude pine box sitting atop a pedestal. Then all filed past to look upon her youthful face one last time. Everyone hurriedly made the sign of the cross before turning away, and mothers holdi...
Weekly Contest #354
(Contains abuse) Standing in the dead garden, the mother pulled her thin sweater tighter against her frail body. She shivered in the chill, the seasons for growing and harvesting long past. Only the husks of pole beans with their brown tendrils still clinging to the wire trellis remained there. She often came out to her garden to clear the cobwebs from her muddled mind, but there was little comfort today. Overhead, slate clouds hovered low, misty. Winter had arrived. Her eldest daughter, Kathleen, would be forty-two tomorrow, and for the fir...
Weekly Contest #353
My favorite place in the whole world is a clearing on the other side of Rainwater Creek. To get there I must balance on a fallen log suspended across the running stream. I don’t think about tumbling into the clear water that sounds like some kind of music rushing over the smooth round stones. At age eight, I’m pretty good at keeping my balance. I go there on my way to the General Store to get a pouch of tobacco for grandpa, although Mama would scold if she knew the clearing was always my first destination. “Thomas,” she’d say if she knew, wa...
Weekly Contest #352
(Story contains infidelity and grief) Saturday EveningCollin dropped to his knees before the wooden cross. It was one of those shrines people put on the side of the road when there’s been a terrible accident. A memorial to someone’s life. And death. His hands were shaking so violently, he could hardly take the small stuffed bear from the shopping bag and place it among the other mementos, among the candles and flowers and notes – and her smiling picture. It got dark early these days, so no one was in the park at this hour. No one heard him c...
Weekly Contest #351
Contains animal cruelty and child endangerment - Marsha loved to stomp on living things, like the day a mourning cloak butterfly landed in the grass. Marsha had been standing with her father, waiting for the kindergarten gates to open, and as usual, refusing to stand quiet and obedient like her classmates. She had run off a short distance, sticking her tongue out at her spineless father, and singing a bawdy song with words even a drunken sailor would blush to repeat. I wasn’t paying much attention to Marsha. As a sprite, I knew what the aura...
Weekly Contest #350
We’d like to believe that what they say about librarians isn’t true. That we’re bitter old spinsters who like to shush people all day. And when we go home at night, we get into comfy terrycloth robes and floppy bunny slippers, microwave a TV dinner, and watch political news, screaming obscenities like ‘hussy’ and ‘floozy’ at the young, blonde newscasters. This sensitive subject came up during our annual librarian’s convention cruise. The guest speaker was none other than Harriet Stein Reed, so revered in the librarian community, that any sel...
Weekly Contest #349
Cursing his ninety-one years of aging bones and leaning heavily on his cane, Percival shuffled into the sleek bullet train and tapped his senior pass. The conductor seemed a bit irritated for screwing up the schedule, but he smugly pointed his index finger toward the second floor. “Glad you could make it, Percy,” he grinned. “I’m afraid, though, the only seats left are on Level Two.” Percival scowled. Level Two was reserved for Boneskins. Segregated people living solely off the government in vermin-infested, crime-filled flats. Meals were ra...
Weekly Contest #348
This story contains child abuse With all the new construction barriers and detour signs, Lauren had to walk a different route to work that day. She knew there was a bus that would take her downtown if she went up 42nd Avenue, but she would have to hurry. 42nd Avenue had street vendors – tables stacked with homemade goods and farm displays of fresh produce – oranges and tomatoes and pungent green onions. She hurried past these. The bus stop was just ahead. At the corner she waited for the light. A woman selling flowers approached her, thrusti...
Weekly Contest #347
Pietro De Luca was not a handsome man. He was squat in stature and somewhat thickset in his middle. Even at the fairly young age of thirty-one, he had a receding hairline and a bald spot on the top of his shiny head. And although he was a well-loved and respected merchant in the quaint village of Triora, a Provence in northern Italy, there was one thing that the village residents found completely baffling: Pietro had won the heart of the most beautiful maiden in their village. After all, Pietro was not dark and dashing in the least, as were...
Weekly Contest #346
Mouse and man regarded each other. “So, we meet at last,” the grizzled elder said, scratching the grey stubble on his chin. He watched the brown mouse sitting on the edge of the puckered rug. “How long has it been now?” But the old man, leaning slightly forward in his wheelchair, did not expect an answer. The rodent sat on his haunches and twitched his whiskers, sniffing the air. “A couple of old bachelors living out the twilight years of their lonely lives.” The old man smiled. “I suspect we’re about the same age,” he said, although he did ...
The school bus picked up speed even as Burton frantically pumped the brakes around each downward mountain curve. He watched her mirrors, the steep precipice of pines sloping off to his right, the bus just missing the steel guardrails that now seemed as useless as flimsy foil. He gripped the wheel with white knuckles knowing it was up to him to get this bus – and its young passengers - off this mountain safely. “C’mon old girl, don’t lose it,” he said and wiped sweat from his forehead. “Ain’t no way we gonna slow this downhill ride without yo...
Weekly Contest #345
THE SCENT OF CRAYONS The man driving the car drove too fast. Not like Daddy. Christina sat in the back seat of the speeding Studebaker and tried to focus on something outside the car window. Telephone poles flashed by, tethered by dipping wires, each passing in rapid succession. This made her dizzy, so she concentrated on her shoes. White patent leather with a gold buckle and baby blue socks with lacy edges that folded down. Christina tapped her toes together – tap, tap, tap – until Mother glared at her from the front passenger seat – a sig...
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