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Weekly Contest #349
Today is April 31. Now you might say “There is no April 31st!” And one-hundred and twenty years ago, you would have been right. Way back then, April ended on the 30th. And April 1st was called April Fools Day, a day for jokes, pranks, and all manner of fun. But then one dumb joke ruined the world, so we don’t have April 1st anymore. We don’t have a day for fools and fooling. Now April starts on the 2nd and ends on the 31st to keep years the proper length. And April 31st is the opposite of what April 1st used to be. It’s a day without laugh...
Weekly Contest #343
Some guests arrive fashionably late, others, intrusively so. Upon entering the ancestral mansion of the Duchy of Shrewsbury, Han Xiaoli The Great removed his green-on-black nuanmao hat and handed it to a perplexed servant. I then watched him stride into the main hall in a manner befitting his stage title: purposefully, posture-perfect, his brown eyes focused intently ahead. He nodded to each partygoer he passed, his mouth stern, his pupils barely straying from straight ahead. He wore an immaculate emerald-green silk robe with a matching dra...
Weekly Contest #340
At the outskirts of civilized land on the island of Crete, upon uneven terrain dotted with loose rocks of all sizes, a lone man astride a donkey emerges over a rocky outcrop. He wears a heavy cowled cloak, and rides high in the saddle. Even from a distance this man appears tall with broad shoulders. And, after he stops to dismount, he pulls back his cowl to reveal a chiseled jawline and high brow. Yet his profile only hints at the power beneath that cloak. The man extracts a waterskin from his pack and takes a quick drink. Water drips down h...
Weekly Contest #332
The Martian Award for Foolish Courage blends ten ultra-light metals in a spiral pendant, a lustrous rainbow of pearlescent, gunmetal, and chrome. Clasped on a silken red ribbon, it is bestowed annually on those who best exemplify the founding principles of Martian society: tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds, high tolerance for personal risk, and misplaced confidence. Every year, ten recipients are invited to a ceremony atop Olympus Mons, the highest mountain in the solar system, to receive the award. It is the highest, and the lowest,...
Weekly Contest #328
From directly above, the horses look like rivulets of water. They glide around hills and slide in and out of little cavities in the earth. They flow as a group, more horses than I’ve ever seen together. The men atop these horses bounce and jostle, filled with restless energy. Many of these men adorn themselves with bright red patches. From a distance these patches appear like shiny trinkets, the sort I like to collect. Everything is still wet from a storm last night, the sun barely pokes through the misty clouds, horses kick up clods of mud ...
Weekly Contest #324
Have you heard about the Squolox? They say it's a sea monster with a beak like an octopus and dark, expressive eyes like a seal. They say it has two long, whiskery tendrils like a catfish that extend from its cheeks like serpents. They say it's a broad beast, wide as two great white sharks side-by-side, and that its body tapers to a lashing tail, at the narrowest still thick around as a man's waist. They say it shoots through the water like a squid, propelled by more than muscle in motion. They also say it has a wicked personality, destroys...
Weekly Contest #317
~~~~~~~~~The Times Intelligencer Journal~~~~~~~~Thursday, August 28th, 2025 BIGFOOT FOUND How a Hiking Disaster Turned into First Contact Described as “Humble, Peaceful, Intelligent Creatures” The Back-channel Treaty with the US Government In Lifestyle: a Conversation with the Bigfoot at the Center of the Story By James Spektator and Edith Afix Around 9:00 AM on May 27th, 2025, a lone backpacker named Jim was walking the Horseshoe Trail in Redwood National Park. The path is a strenuous one, with several uphill stretches, and on this cool, mi...
Weekly Contest #314
Scholars at The British Museum discovered the following script wedged behind a cabinet in a storage room. Originally written in Middle English, the provenance of the scroll was unknown, but later dated to the 14th century. The text below is a modern translation of that scroll.My name is Caribun Karmax Fim. I am a dragon, one of the last dragons to hold council with humans. I possess a centuries-old story that fills me with sadness to remember, but a story that should be preserved and remembered.Before continuing, let me thank you for taking ...
You won’t find The Days of Yore Bookstore in any registry. You can’t walk in the front door and browse their selection. The storefront lacks signage and sits on a lonely London commercial road well away from the city center. To gain access requires high-end personal connections, a three month advance appointment, and a stringent proof of bank account: prospective customers wire the store five million Swiss francs, which will wire the money back in seven days. This is the highest-end bookstore the world has ever known. The lowest price tag on...
Weekly Contest #305
He looked between us once more and said, “It’s either her or me…” He was right of course, one of these two: either my good friend Niles Curmudgeon, or my boss Sylvia Brightenite, was a monster in disguise, a doppelganger here to steal the company's secrets. In my hands I held a torch, a machine designed by our own company, appropriately named TorchCorp. I could roast one or both of them alive in an instant if I thought that the best option. But how could I torch my good friend Niles? We’d worked at Torchcorp together for five years. We’d des...
Weekly Contest #299
In a dingy basement with cracked concrete walls, a CRT television sputters to life from atop a white plastic table. A large brown beetle, which had been hiding under a corner of the TV, skitters off to find a new shadow away from the light and hum of this new disturbance. The screen produces a hazy image that loops through the top back to the bottom, repeating a tumbling splay of colors like a clumsy waterfall. Eventually the picture settles.The first channel shows a sporting match, a gridiron contest, but with rusty earth replacing the trad...
Weekly Contest #291
Phillip Galleazzo, the Duke of Milan, was dreaming of a glass cage when he woke to the sound of pounding upon his bedroom door. “Your grace! Your grace!” It was Vincento, his guard captain, who suddenly burst in. “What is this about?” The Duke demanded of his most trusted subordinate. “Intruders, your grace!” Vincento gasped between hurried breaths. “Found in your storerooms. We think they’ve all fled… I chased one of them back over the wall myself.”“Intruders! In my storerooms! Did they make off with anything?”“We haven’t made a t...
Weekly Contest #287
Will the old woman realize I put something in her tea? She rests in the lounge, I work in the kitchen. She sits in her old leather chesterfield recliner. Quiet… listening? I’ve prepared tea for her many times. The lounge lies two doors down the hall, maybe ten feet separates the two of us. Art surrounds her: vases, sculptures, but just one painting, a lakeside view of mostly shades of purple, but punctuated by bright stabs of yellow representing fireflies. It’s the painting that hides her safe.She’s likely already opened a magazine, or, less...
Weekly Contest #285
A dream first told me I would travel back in time. I was a newborn, in my mother’s arms, staring out into a cold, open, scary world of soft blue and white. I glanced over my father’s shoulder, caught the gaze of an orderly, a man with my hazel eyes like dirt scattered across the surface of an algae lake. He had muscular arms and a creased forehead, just like adult me. The only difference between that man and my mirror image were his wide eyes and slack jack, an expression of bewilderment I never wear. But of course he was bewildered, he’d ju...
Weekly Contest #280
To a beige office building of twenty-five floors, on a quiet Saturday morning with maybe fifty people in the whole high-rise, approaches an electrician in a baseball cap. She hands her papers to the security guard at the front desk, who calls up to the 17th floor to confirm the contract. The security guard only briefly notes the name patch on her powder-blue coveralls: “Jen”. A name just common enough, and not her real name.For this electrician is really an industrial spy, coming to steal security data from an AI company specializing in heal...
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