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Weekly Contest #371
Oreos. Jason wants Oreos. No. Jason is howling for Oreos. “I want Oreos! I want Oreos! I want Oreos! MOMMYYYY! I. Want. OREOS!!!!” A whooshing sound penetrated his muffled shrieks. The tires? The engine? Oh God, I hope it’s not the engine. We’re almost home. I’ll just pull over to this rest stop and check. Jason wants Oreos. I can get Oreos. We’re almost home. Hang in there, car. I’ll get you Oreos. Just stop screaming. Just stop…. The fog cocooning me between waking and sleep dissolved, leaving me shivering. I was lying on m...
Weekly Contest #196
Six-year-old Sannie Johnson knew she wasn’t special. Her mother told her. Her sisters told her. Her uncle told her. The hundreds of people who streamed by the tattered “Homeless” signs she and her mother held everyday told her. That’s why Sannie didn’t think she’d done anything special the day she noticed a dollar bill fall from the purse of a woman wearing a fur coat with a high collar outside the Sapphire Hotel. The woman swept through the hotel entrance, failing to notice the little girl who scurried from the shadows of the alley,...
Weekly Contest #99
Warning: Story includes themes of suicideThe first rays of the July sun flashed off General Burton’s glasses and onto the refrigerator as he applied three drops of lubricant to the slide rails of his Colt .45. One, two, three on one side. One, two, three on the other. Two drops on the barrel. One drop on the engagement lugs. One drop on the interior of the barrel bushing. Re-assemble. His fingers moved over the parts with a command accrued over seven decades. But his arthritic joints and knotted...
Weekly Contest #92
The old grandfather clock, invisible in the darkened dining room, whirred and clunked through its gears just before chiming eleven times. As the last tone faded, the innkeeper heard a creak. This was not the groan of the country house settling. For 42 years, the murmurs and sighs of the aged walls and floors had woven themselves into the innkeeper’s consciousness. She knew those noises as intimately as she knew the pops and clicks of her bones.No, this was the squeak of one Early American floorboard being pushed against a...
Weekly Contest #91
In her final moments of existence, just milliseconds before “Biographies, N-S” snuffs out her life forever, Librarian Boughton manages one final cry.“Murder!”Her two assistants, slogging through the daily shelving over in Fiction, look at each other.“Did you hear something?” asks Matt.Emma glances over her shoulder toward “Biographies”.“I don’t think so. It was probably just the construction.”Matt slides two books into their proper spaces before saying, “Should we go see? Just to make sure?”“She doesn’t like anyone in Biographies. ...
Weekly Contest #73
Lumpy took the chain between his teeth and jiggled it. It clinked and jingled as chains do, but did not loosen. The horse pricked his ears forward and studied the contraption locking his stall door securely in place. He shifted his hooves and moved his body around to come at it for another approach. A furious jangling reverberated through the barn, drowning out the Christmas carols playing softly through the hidden speakers. The grooms, perched on hay bales outside the stall, leaned forward.“He’s getting it,” whispered Manny.“...
Weekly Contest #65
I scribble this statement with a trembling hand. My heart still pounds fiercely, though the horror I am about to relate is but two hours past. I have been taking brandy since I arrived at my home, but my nerves are yet unsettled. To he who holds this account, I implore you to read carefully and beware the great Patowmac River.My story begins on this last night of October, just after the clock in the city square had struck 11. My brother John had paused in his travels from Pennsylvania colony to spend three days with me before returning to hi...
Weekly Contest #59
The old man moaned. So low, so feeble came the cry that the others never heard it over the whistling and howling outside the cave.But the boy squatting near the old man had tuned his senses for the slightest breath. He glanced at the mound, unmoving beneath the bear pelts, and drove the stick between his palms into the plank at his feet, spinning it with a speed that made his palms burn. The wolf fur slipped from his shoulders, but he poured all focus into the wisp of smoke curling from the dry grasses tucked into the notch. Within...
When Enrique Otero was five years old, a shriveled old mango seller in Caracas told him about the heat of the Venezuelan savanna."First, the rocks begin to smoke," he said to the little boy, knife flashing through the fruit. "Then your nose begins to burn and you know you've breathed in the hottest part of the sun. It moves through your throat and lungs like a thousand burning needles."Enrique swallowed, not bothering to wipe the mango juice dribbling down his chin."It cooks you from the inside, melting the beards off the men.""Wha...
Weekly Contest #57
It’s 9:45 am and Dr. Ingalls’ next client will arrive in 15 minutes. He’s a new client – this is his second session following a first session that went something like this:Dr. I: So tell me, what’s on your mind?Client: I know not how to respond to so general a query.Dr. I: Is there something specific bothering you? What’s brought you to psychotherapy?Client: With the greatest respect, sir, that ‘tis a familiar question from one I have only just met.The interview proceeded as such, leaving Dr. Ingalls with the following notes to review a...
Weekly Contest #56
Of all the strange things that had happened in Eddie Dent’s life - and death - the incident involving Julia Garcia was perhaps the strangest. The night had started normally enough. The politics reporter had slammed down her phone, cursed and raced out of the office, late for the city council meeting. The sports reporter had filed on the tennis tournament and also raced out, late for the high school football game. The crime reporter had stayed hunched over his keyboard clicking and clacking, occasionally swearing, until midn...
Weekly Contest #55
On April 27, 2017, an emergency meeting of the Secret Society of Auditory Control came to order. It was a secret meeting that took place in the society’s secret boardroom at the tip top of one of New York City’s 274 skyscrapers. Eleven men and one woman gathered behind a heavy door made of African Blackwood. Only the simple outline of a small gold-plated bell positioned where a door knocker would be gave any indication of the work at hand. All was quiet on one side of that door, but not on the other. The Secret Society of Auditory...
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