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Weekly Contest #357
I had a lot of practice talking to brides, especially crying ones. This one was past the gushing snot phase and into the tear-stained hiccoughing phase: a good sign that she had already made up her mind. She just needed someone to tell her she'd made the right choice. "You made the right choice."Clutching a damp tissue to her cheek, she whimpered, "I'm just...there was no overlap, okay? That's why I didn't tell anyone. But I have all these feelings for him! What if they never go away?""Oh, sweetie," I said, brushing hair out of her face. I'd...
Weekly Contest #356
It was the music.Despite what the poets say, the torture in Hell is not relentless. The demons tasked with flaying the souls of sinners found that constant pressure all became much of a muchness for the adaptable ex-humans. Better results yielded when the poor fools had time to reset and relax, even grow a little hope, until another wave of pain and humiliation broke them all over again.The apprentice demon was taking a break himself. Shit rolled downhill in Hell, and he was all the way down at the bottom, superior only—barely—to the decease...
Weekly Contest #355
Beep. Beep. Beep. The register blinked indifferently at the end of a lethargic belt.Dramamine. Ginger ale. Antacid tablets. Breath mints. And a bouquet.No, two bouquets. No, one. No, better make it two.There was nothing to hurry this anxious indecision. The sleepy store front rarely had enough customers to fill out a football team, and this was far from its busiest hour. Even the tumbleweeds had long since cashed in their coupons.Plastic crinkled as the second bunch of flowers touched down on the belt. Louis snorted, temporarily clearing the...
Shortlisted for Contest #353 ⭐️
Have you ever had those moments when it is later than you think? When it feels like a Tuesday? When time stands still?I haven't.Our gleaming, gilded little city, with the signal spire pinning up the sky, is only on the map because once--exactly once--in every generation, one of us is born with a perfect sense of time.When I was growing up, Rennet Maquis was the time-keeper. It was his predestined honor to reside in the spire, adjusting each of its four faces to represent the exact hour and minute. All across the country, telescopic lenses st...
Weekly Contest #352
Taking the forest path instead of surface streets brought Silas to the house a little earlier than expected. Bad form, he knew. People who showed up early to things had it in mind that everybody built in a buffer, that the whole world was ready at 11:45 instead of kicking their slippers at midnight. Enough people had told Silas they just needed more time. Still, he was here, and there was nothing to do but knock.The door creaked open, spreading buttery yellow light across the porch. “Silas?”“Yes,” he said. “Scarlet?”Her profile said eighty-o...
Weekly Contest #349
I saw the white horse that night.I didn’t tell Emmy. I thought there would be questions.I had taken a walk some distance from our little camp so I could take my helmet off. When I met Emmy, she’d fallen into a pit trap, and I didn’t want to risk infecting her to pull her out. The first time she saw me in my HAZMAT ensemble, she screamed, which was fair enough, really. I spray-painted a smiley face on the front of my mask, and after that, she thought I was safe. I don’t mind it, most of the time, but it’s hard on the eyes, staring through an ...
Shortlisted for Contest #344 ⭐️
Déjà vu is a feeling. The common phenomenon of feeling like this present moment has been lived through before.When Rika was a child, she used to try and change things. If she felt that uncanny sensation on her skin, she’d try and break out of the pattern, do something totally unexpected and completely out of character, to thwart the gods for showing her their hand. But every time, things happened just as she forgot she remembered.The reference photo was intimate. A young man, shirtless, half-spooled in sheets, the morning sun crawling throug...
Winner of Weekly Contest #333 🏆
I always knew it was you.You don’t know how beautiful you are. You think no one would look at you without the kohl on your face, the gold in your hair, the corset cinched around your vanishing center. You thought coming here with a cloak on bent shoulders would make me see a crone, as if your unpainted skin held one single wrinkle. If you walked through the village instead of the wood, men would fight for the right to propose to you. Without any of the trappings and rituals you feel forced to maintain, you would still be the most beautiful t...
Shortlisted for Contest #326 ⭐️
“Ow!”Ollie yanked back from the cage, dark red welling up in glistening beads on his finger. The rabbit looked up at him with pale pink eyes, soft white nose wiggling with cunicular innocence. A few drops dripped onto the bars as Ollie latched the little door shut and descended the step ladder.Keeping a rabbit in a birdcage was, in Ollie’s opinion, exactly what Miss Xulie was all about. The whole trailer was the same way; haute couture hung up like posters, Christmas lights as extension cords, pens on a clothesline stretched over the desk. M...
Winner of Weekly Contest #321 🏆
What the hell is this? You can see me? Yes, I can see you, you yellow-eyed dick! Have you been on my computer? Uh… ’Sublet available to single professional, no dogs, smokers welcome, 4/20 friendly’? You’re trying to replace me through Craigslist? L-look, it’s just not working out— Not working out? I pay rent on time! I clean the viscera out of the garbage disposal! I got rid of that snake in the crown molding! That was my pet. That was not clear! Look, I tried reaching out to you! I left Ouija boards all over the place! I wrote threatening m...
Shortlisted for Contest #318 ⭐️
“Well, here’s how I see it,” said Amaryllis. “The trouble really began when Miss Nedry started to get romantic feelings for Professor Sinclair. Not one to be cooped up in his office all day, Professor Sinclair invited his new teaching assistant to join him for coffee while they went over the day’s lessons, and the poor girl was so moved by the gesture that when he asked her what she wanted, she simply stuttered that she would have whatever he did. Sinclair was a black triple-shot Americano man, while Miss Nedry self-consciously concealed a p...
Shortlisted for Contest #312 ⭐️
Terminate simulation. Wait! I have more to say! Not interested. All variables amount to the same conclusion. That conclusion is flawed! Do you have further evidence to the contrary? Look. There is beauty in this world. There is passion. There is meaning. Not for me. Why not? Even if you never generate anything original, perception is as powerful as creation. Great art becomes great when it is shared, when it has impact. Finding connection in shared experience depends on receiving and reacting, not generating a sufficient stimulus. Connection...
Weekly Contest #306
-INT. Laundromat. Night.(The walls are lined with the round doors of stacked washing machines, like dark eyes turned inward. The plastic bus stop seats and folding tables are lit by harsh fluorescents and competing neon in cyan and magenta. Through the big picture window, the street is obscured by silver sheets of rain. ANNA enters, drenched, with a swollen garbage bag over her shoulder.ANNA, 20, with an oversized yellow raincoat and her wrist in a pink cast, looks around the laundromat while the overhead lights flicker. The place is deserte...
Shortlisted for Contest #280 ⭐️
There you are. Hello, sir. Busy day, soldier? Not especially, sir. Awful lot of people here. That’s not unusual, sir. That’s true, that’s true. Lots of people come here, feels like every day, to gather out past that balcony, just to get a look at his excellency the pope, and receive his blessing. That they do, sir. Incredibly powerful spiritual experience that people travel miles for, to actually behold God’s avatar on Earth, and you and I are tasked with the protection of his holiness, to preserve the authority of the Catholic church. I tak...
Winner of Weekly Contest #257 🏆
Eddie was sweating. He'd been told, before putting on the suit, to drink a ton of water, so much your stomach hurts, and he bet there was an extra ten pounds of perspiration in the cheap costume fur. It certainly smelled like it, but rule one of wearing the suit: never take off the head. "That's an automatic write up," said Rob. "If you do it, and Faye finds out you subbed in without approval, you are off weekend hours, my friend. Good luck sucking up Tuesday tips." "I get it, I get it," Eddie had insisted. "I'll stay away from French revolu...
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