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Weekly Contest #371
The ride attendant pointed at Nolan, then at the guy behind him, then at the raft. “Singles? You two?” The guy behind Nolan was tall and unhurried. He wore a faded t-shirt, which hung off his frame suggesting he hadn’t thought about how his clothes fit, and stepped forward with an easy nod. “Works for me.” Nolan climbed into the raft and pulled the lap bar down. He had planned the time of this ride for exactly 10:15, when the wait times averaged nineteen minutes versus the forty-six it would hit by Noon. He’d built a four-minute buffer int...
When I arrived at Sideling Hill Rest Area the only vehicle in the lot was the one I had come for. Two months earlier the place would have been half full. But tonight the welcome center sat dark behind its glass, and a sheet of paper was taped outside the doors. CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE The tape had let go at one corner, so the page lifted and dropped with every gust off the ridge. The vending machines glowed with a hum, and were the only human-made noise that could be heard. Interstate 68 ran empty below the cut, and the wind came throu...
Weekly Contest #370
The monitor flickered to life, casting a pale blue glow over Elias’ face. He winced, shielding his eyes until the brightness stabilized. The wallpaper was a generic photograph of a rolling green hill, absurdly peaceful against the frozen mud outside. He moved the mouse, the cursor gliding with a smoothness that felt wrong after the rough mechanics of a siege engine. He found the taskbar, his heart hammering against his ribs, and hovered over the clock in the corner. 10:42 PM. He took a breath. His fingers trembled as he clicked the date. Thu...
Weekly Contest #368
Mattie Pruett had been sitting on an overturned crate at the edge of Trench Four, watching Caleb sift screen-loads of ochre dirt through a wire mesh, when her father's shadow fell across the both of them. Caleb was eightteen, tall and loose-jointed like so many boys his age who hadn't finished arriving at themselves, and he wore a battered felt fedora that he'd bought at a thrift store in Lincoln because – he'd admitted on his second day in Tanzania, grinning like it was a confession – Indiana Jones was the whole reason he wanted to be an ar...
Weekly Contest #367
It was always two o'clock in the morning and seventy degrees inside the River Royale Casino. Elias had come to appreciate that. Outside, the South Dakota winter went about its business, burying the interstate and the truck stops underneath a whole, flat, white blanket of nothing. Inside, under the drop ceiling and the drifting smoke, all time had been abolished. He leaned on the brass rail and watched the blackjack pit. Below him the dealers flipped and raked with the settled economy of people who had stopped thinking about their hands years...
Weekly Contest #366
I should have known better. But things between me and Hugo were meant to be. It was predestined. Written in the stars. All of our friends said we were the perfect couple. Then, after we had already moved in together and he had asked me to marry him, he blindsided me with a confession that rocked my world forever. Let me back up. I met Hugo two years ago at the Ballard farmers market. He was wearing a blue jacket and holding an heirloom tomato, looking at it like it was asking a question he couldn’t answer, and when he looked up at me, I felt...
Weekly Contest #364
It was a Tuesday when the treats went missing. I found out at ten o'clock exactly, because ten o'clock is snack time and I have never once been late for it. I was in position on the kitchen rug, sitting squarely, ears up. Deploy Maximum Cuteness! The Tall One reached into the jar and came out… with nothing. He didn't say a word about it. He never says words. He's an actions person. He has big boots, gentle hands, smells of coffee and hay. He held the jar upside down over my bowl and shook it. Nothing fell out. Then he tilted it all the way d...
Weekly Contest #363
Snow started falling around four in the morning, and by seven it was a good 14 inches deep on top of David Cornwall’s Buick. David stood at the kitchen window with his coffee and watched it come down, piling higher with each passing minute. "That's got to come off before it sets up," he said. "Sun gets at it, it turns to cement." "Just wait for the plow. He’s supposed to be by here around noon,” his wife Dorothy said. "It's in the lease, so they have to do it." "The plow." He set his cup on the sill with a scoff. "They’ll shove a berm up beh...
Weekly Contest #362
Wonderfully Made The sky over Hargrove Street was the color of a fresh bruise. Three weeks outside taught a person things, and Eli Turner had maybe twenty minutes before the darkening sky opened up on top of him. Above the rooftops, the clouds were now drawing themselves up like his father's shoulders used to before a beating… tight, swollen, and full of danger. The wind came up hard off the river and flipped the leaves silver-side-out. Eli pulled the strap on his duffel tighter and made for the only lit doorway on the block. EASTSIDE COM...
The castle looked grand. It stood between I-90 and Roselle Road in Schaumburg, Illinois. Its turrets were the color of dull steel under a wet March sky. "You wanted this," Elias said. "I saw the billboard and thought it looked like fun." Dmitri studied the battlements with the expression of a man appraising livestock. "It said knights and feast. Since we have nowhere to be until nine tomorrow morning, I thought we should take in some American culture." It had been three months since the two men in their summer coats arrived back in a Dece...
Weekly Contest #361
The padlock was nearly rusted shut. I worked the key back and forth a full minute letting out a series of exasperated grunts before it gave. Inside, the darkness smelled of cardboard and mustiness. I swatted around in the air at nothing before finding the pull-cord for the bulb on the fourth or fifth try. Unit 114. The number was painted on the cinderblock next to the door. Three rows of boxes against the back wall, a folded cot beside a push broom worn down to a wedge. Silas Krane lived a long life, but had packed the better part of it int...
Weekly Contest #360
The clock on the wall behind Dr. Wentworth read 3:50, and in that moment Elias Larson knew that he was not going to pass. Nothing had been said, but he read it all the same in the body language of his doctoral committee like a farmer reads the weather in the sky – a drop in air pressure rather than by anything stated. Dr. Okonkwo’s pen had stopped moving twenty minutes ago and had not moved since. Dr. Hendricks kept folding and unfolding the corner of a page as though it personally disappointed her. And Dr. Wentworth, who had guided Elias’ l...
Weekly Contest #359
The dye stung where the razor had nicked the Emir, Abd al-Rahman III. He remained still in spite of it, shutting his eyes with a grimace while the servant worked the black paste through his beard. The grey vanished stroke by stroke. The red hair his mother had gifted him also diappeared. He had not let a soul in Córdoba see his natural color in twenty years. His chamberlain read to him while the servant worked. A border tax, and a marriage among the Banu Qasi. Abdul, as he was known, was to bless it. Or forbid it. Whichever suited his fancy...
Weekly Contest #357
Ibrahim al-Manzur found the younger man, not much older than a boy, in his courtyard at an hour when the hammers of the smith’s forge were still working late into the night. What grew between them began over a cup of wine, and in the broken tongues of three different languages. Ibrahim, known as The Wolf was the General of the armies, Warden of the northern marches, came in from the stables and discovered a stranger in clothes no loom in al-Andalus could have woven. He spoke in a tongue that echoed strangely against the mosaic tiles. The bo...
Weekly Contest #356
Strasbourg, The Feast of Saint Denis Dmitri, This goes by Conrad the wool-merchant, who is honest and cannot read. Your last letter reached me whole with the seal intact. I have read it enough times that the creases in the vellum are going soft. But I do enjoy reading your words, even though you are sparing with them even on parchment. I am glad that I taught you to read and to write there at that table where we sat together, your hand under mine. I will not now pretend I regret arming you with this skill as it has proven useful. I am stil...
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