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Submitted to Contest #339
CW: Eating disorders Claudia gathers the letters. Each one had been sealed with a signet and a blotch of wax. Red wax. Claudia had opened each one with a letter opener shaped like a mini-sword. She had been careful. They still look unopened. She feels the weight of the letters in her hands, holding them like a sandwich. She could eat them. Truthfully, she already has, for the contents of every letter was already deep inside of her. She fed off the memory. The thrill of opening each letter and reading what was inside. Poetry. Unrhymed. Formle...
Submitted to Contest #329
This story imagines Noah as a horrible human, chosen by G-d to watch the world die as he saves his family and a menagerie. There is graphic violence. She knew that when he was in this trance-like state he could be that way for hours. She also knew that he lost all awareness of time. He would wake up and feel like only moments had passed.She was going to take advantage and finally get on the ark. She wanted to see it for herself.She watched for Naamah to start cooking the large dinner. It was Friday. She should be home but her mother would no...
Submitted to Contest #328
The BeginningPolly's truck ate up the asphalt, and the tiny rocks leapt out of the driveway into the street. She'd had enough of her sister’s drunken romance. She said what she came to say, and she drove away in a cloud of exhaust and disappointment. Minutes earlier, her words hit hard. “Who are you? How did you get into my sister’s life?” She was a cannon. She blasted me. I had no answers, but I sobered up… quick. When she turned to you, you were ready for the fight. You said one word, over and over. “Paul. Paul. PAUL!” Polly’s ex-husba...
Submitted to Contest #327
Heading downtown there's a bridge that's a work of art. There's a spine that travels across the span of the bridge. It's dynamic. It's beautiful. It is you on your side with your spine carrying me down your back. The bridge takes it all. Every tire. Even the shoes. Everything steps on the bridge, and the bridge keeps all of it from falling into the water.I look at you in my mind's eye, and I want to fall into the water. You are sleeping in the water. I wonder how dark the water is for you when you're asleep. When your eyes are closed. You ar...
Submitted to Contest #325
(There are allusions to molestation and abuse) She leapt over the short wall and climbed through the hole where a basement window will one day be. She was running from the wind that brushed against her when she thought she was free of him. Foolish. She slid along the wall; it seemed like the wind was kicking in every brick. She swore she would go to bed that night with a topographical road map of remarkable bruises. She looked down. There were none to see. The wind has been careful to hurt her deeper than any eye could spot. She felt them. A...
Submitted to Contest #323
(This story blends fiction and non-fiction elements.) Five words. She has to turn her head sideways to read them. They run down the spine of the book that's sitting on the library shelf. She crouches and tilts the book, sliding it from its home. She holds it flat in her palm. The title is a memory. She is looking at me, like a portrait, holding that book. That’s how I see her. Her eyes never blink.And the author of the five word title is dead. Dead and buried. I want her to read the book. I know the book. I know the title. I wish I could re...
Submitted to Contest #322
Imagine being so turned off by marriage that you'd rather kill anyone who tries to propose to you then to marry him. Sounds like a good plot for a fairy tale? From the beginning of my life, my mother saw me as a miracle. She had lived a hard life full of tragedy. She had a daughter before I was born but she gave that daughter up to the man who left her to return to his wife. They raised that daughter. Not my mom. My mom met my dad when she was a dancer at a go-go bar. Not a stripper... but close. He was likely in the middle of a manic episod...
Submitted to Contest #317
5:6 I only know pictures. Your eyes open like a book. The kind of book that's got hard covers. The one that's so big you have to sit it on a table to read it. It's delicious. It uses all the words found in any dictionary but for some reason when you read them in this book they seem to have deeper meaning. The pages are silky. The margins are two fingers deep. The letters are blackberry black. They're blacker than any letters you've ever seen before. Somehow the blackness gives emotion to the story you're telling. It's like the color of a cav...
Submitted to Contest #318
The beach doesn't care about my bare feet. This is the wrong time. Late Autumn. The wind creates lumps in the sand that look like dead bodies. There are no bodies now, living or dead. The bodies are home, working and driving and sleeping in their beds. They’ll be back, though. Alive. The beach isn’t a bed now. It’s not a place to rest. The sand accepts this simple fact and waits.But the ocean is always angry. He is a shark with his teeth out, row after row. People or no people, it’s all the same for him. A tortured force. He tumbles and ...
Submitted to Contest #315
Matthew (1) 5:1 - 2 He found his way over the sharp rocks. His sandals might as well have been his bare feet, they were so shabby and thin. It was a pain that might discourage other men, but He was driven by the words in His heart. The words burned His lips. The pain of His body would not challenge His faith until much later when His arms are hanging from the nails piercing His wrists. The word "forsaken" had no meaning to Him now. It hid in the shadows of His mind and on the other side of this mountain. Today He climbed the bright side, wit...
CW: Physical violence and sexual violence Warning: This story explores the idea that it would take a despicable, hard edged person with very few morals to sit safely on a ship (an ark) and watch everyone on earth be killed by a flood. G-d would have to choose a monster of a man to build the ark for only pairs of animals and his own family while He destroys the earth with a flood. Every neighbor, every friend, every stranger will die as Noah and his family sail safely to a new Eden. This story is not meant to offend, but if you prefer to see ...
Submitted to Contest #314
My voice keeps me safe from the old man. He terrifies me, but I am in his home at his invitation. He arranged meetings with his wife. He had heard of my talent, and he wanted to keep his wife “happy and occupied.” She delights in my stories. I speak endlessly to her. That’s why her husband doesn’t bother me. I distract her so that he can do his foul business.She sits close to me and lets me whisper my stories to her. We spend hours this way until her husband is fast asleep. His days are spent hunting. The young girls in the Achaea don’t stan...
Interviewer: When do you paint?Artist: At NightInterviewer: When do you sleep?Artist: I don’t. I can’t sleep. Too much work to do. These canvases won’t paint themselves, you know? Painting 1The cold choir of the endless white waves ignores the monster on its side. The sand wrestles with the saltwater to become a brown sludge that holds him on the shoreline. She has made him. He is painted into the middle of the canvas with only one witness other than we who watch him living or dying or breathing or not. The particles of his beard stretch lo...
Submitted to Contest #313
There is a brief mention of bullying The whole house smells like fried chicken. I hate it. I close my bedroom door and pile towels to block the stench. Nothing stops it. The funk slips from the kitchen window and creeps up to mine. I wish I could nail and caulk my window shut. It’s a sneaky smell, and it finds the cracks and the smallest openings.My grandmother’s fried chicken is “a family favorite.” Obviously, it's not mine. I refuse. I choose to be a vegetarian rather than eat that garbage. I’ll leave the dismembering of dead chickens to t...
The huntsman confronted me in the woods. He asked, “have you been eaten by the wolf today?” I told him no, and then he said, “Well, I have to ask that first. You understand.” He said, “the wolf is my only enemy, and I hunt him because of that. I do not want him to eat you. I want to stop you. I want to break into you like a thief, but I couldn’t be second to him. He might have stolen what I want to take from you.” With that he lifted up his heavy ax and split my head like a piece of wood.As I stood there with my face cut in half, I asked “w...
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