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Weekly Contest #322
Angie is ten minutes late to the audition and she is trying not to think about it, any of it, the confluence of misfortunes: the coffee grinder burning out, then the oat milk spilling on the silk dress she had picked out three weeks ago, then, finally, the painted ceramic mug slipping from her shaking hand and shattering on the floor, nearly taking her toe in the process. It’s easier to blame the coffee and not the fog of dread that has been seeping through her apartment windows every night, as dense and light as cotton candy. She knows if...
Weekly Contest #321
The only time Jade had ever seen a scallop was on television. She had certainly never eaten one, but when the cater-waiter in his stiff suit offered a tray, she smiled as though it were second nature and plucked one little pellet up. The thing wobbled on its toothpick spear like it could sense her hesitancy. Nobody else was eating. They clutched their Champagne flutes with white knuckles instead. The scallop hovered above Jade’s napkin, monogrammed with an “MV.” Should I throw this out? she thought. Chuck it in the fountain? She was used to ...
Weekly Contest #287
Elyse laces her fingers around a mug — her favorite, the one her son painted for her at a cheap pottery studio. She’s probably been accumulating lead in her bloodstream with every sip of tea, but this reminder that her son was once a child is worth it; it stabs her heart with a prideful, painful joy. Spicy chai and viscous honey simmer through her shivering body like lava crawling over a glacier. She pulls a chair up to the window, taps on her phone and finds the soft jazz playlist. She is on the fifth floor and the street unfurls below the ...
Weekly Contest #212
Dear Ms. Darien Nicolas:We are writing in response to your inquiry about the XKP Dream-Viewer 500™. We regret to inform you that this item is currently out of stock. The next shipment is expected to arrive at our warehouse on October 1, 2023. We have placed your name on a waitlist and you will be prioritized should you decide to follow through on your purchase.As you may already know, donning the Dream-Viewer 500™’s nonintrusive mask is akin to tuning in to the television show of your choice — while you’re asleep! If you’re plagued by pesky ...
Weekly Contest #207
There had been a rumor, living in perpetuity on the tongues of generations of fishermen and charter captains, that something strange lived on the ocean floor. The brash and flushed old-timers sweating over their pub pints would exchange stories of a salacious mermaid tempting them beneath the surface with the promise of a saltwater kiss, as viscous and everlasting as taffy. The younger guys smoking joints behind the boathouse liked to joke about increasingly ridiculous combinations of creatures, a shark and an electric eel or a giant frog cr...
Weekly Contest #173
Sixteen: Our gloved fingers intertwine as he steers me away from the ice patches in our path. The tinsel that shrouds the Christmas tree in the town square gives us a glittering wink as we take our cups of hot cocoa from the vendor with a grateful nod. We sit on the bench in front of Fancy’s Fudge, ignoring splinters digging into the backs of our puffy coats and the peeling green paint that bubbles beneath our jeans. We’re drunk off fumes of chocolate and pine, and from the spirit that lingers in the scene around us, laughing families window...
Weekly Contest #156
We strayed in far corners of your library, slow-dancing in a wood-paneled and wool-carpeted room. The paintings stared at us in disapproval, even the canvases with nothing but inanimate objects painted on their once bare bodies.I can just see a paintbrush tickling the white rough surface. The brush’s ends are stained a deep purple, the color of your favorite kind of grapes. Once purple meets white, there is no returning, no going back to a blank slate. You finish what you started or you get a new canvas.But new canvases are expensive. And a ...
Weekly Contest #155
Content warning: Brief mentions of animals being harmed. Stone Scalari lived alone. It was certainly more peaceful than living with his wife and children had been. He was 62. A lifetime of sharing space with loved ones had left him nothing but debt, headaches, and agony. Stone sat on the chaise lounge on his back patio one Saturday morning about a year after Carrie had left. He was holding a mug of coffee to his lips when he heard a dull thunk behind him. He ignored it, took a sip, cursed out loud. Too hot. A bird started chirping weak...
Shortlisted for Contest #154 ⭐️
It’s Jasey’s turn to host book club. The sangria in the pitcher grows warm as the curated landscape of candles thickens the air with the scents of spearmint and watered roses. Her friends sit in the living room and chat around the coffee table. There are eight of them and it’s likely none of them read the book. Sandra chose it and she always picks books featuring infidelity to make herself feel better about being a divorcée.Jasey hesitates to call them her friends, really. She had friends in college and even made some at her first job, at a ...
Weekly Contest #130
I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes, all originating from the space in my father’s skull. One night he spun a story in which I was a pilot, flying a ’50s-style turboprop over oceans made of sapphire; in the next, I was a cunning thief, pilfering from greedy ghouls who lined their pockets with the misery of others; yet another night, I was a magician, pulling rabbits out of a hat during the day and frolicking with them on my farm by night. But in my favorite timeline, I was a princess and a knight and a scholar in one. I studied in my cozy corn...
Weekly Contest #129
They hadn’t been in the same room together in five years, after the wedding. That reunion had ended with a glass of bourbon leaving its permanent mark on the white dress, and they had all come to an unspoken agreement not to meet after that. But a group will always have factions, much as a broken chain still was once made of links. They were no longer a collective unit, but some bonds lingered, suspended in time and unbothered by circumstance. It was Drew’s idea. His uncle had passed away a week before Christmas and bequeathed his house ...
Weekly Contest #105
Every year, the three women traveled to the Coney Island boardwalk on the first Saturday of the summer season to watch the fireworks. She didn’t know how to tell them that this year may be her last. That morning, Abigail had received an envelope in the mail. The envelope, the one that congratulated her and told her the admissions department at Stanford would be honored to accept her into its class of 2025. She’d torn open the letter right there at the mailbox and shrieked and her mother had run out the front door, knowing from eighteen yea...
Weekly Contest #31
It was a May midafternoon when Mom called me inside to help her fold the laundry. I pretended not to hear her, because the sun was finally softly brushing the treetops after a strangely long winter, and humidity and the promise of summer vacation hung in the air, and I was spectacularly beating Henry, the boy next door, at a rudimentary game of street hockey.Mom wasn’t a shouter. Instead she sung my name incessantly, a pleasant incantation I didn’t particularly want to hear, like when waiters chanted “happy birthday” at Chili’s or when Mom p...
Weekly Contest #22
Laura’s mother always told her not to walk in the woods alone at night. But it’s 11:03 on New Year’s Eve, and she plunges into the mass of trees, armed with only a bottle of champagne whose gold foil rubs against her sweaty palm and a phone announcing unhelpful directions to her destination.“In 500 feet, take a slight right,” the robotic voice says. The screen displays three different paths ahead, all of which veer right.Laura has walked this path every New Year’s Eve for the past seven years; she should know, by now, which path leads to the...
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