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Weekly Contest #284
The Beachcomber’s Guide is the first thing I see, the anchor to the past. We walk into the cottage, and I'm hit with memories of childhood. Running barefoot on the toast-colored boards, a feathered path worn down the middle of the front room, long imprinted from sprinting off the beach to the kitchen, ignoring Anna’s call to wash the sand off our feet, because we were only grabbing another soda or an extra bucket, and how much sand could possibly be deposited onto the floor in such a mad rush? (The answer: a lot.) “We’re here,” I tell Anna n...
Weekly Contest #272
Use the song, Amanda suggests to me, again. This time, she’s flanked by someone else.It’s Me. Past Me. It’s hard to grasp, even in this spirit world. But it’s clearly a younger, more handsome version of my body than I had been most recently acquainted with. He (I?) stands next to Amanda, with his trademark smirk.Remember what you did to get through that time, Past Me says, and the tone of voice carries a hint of pain, so wispy I might have missed it, if not for the speaker being, well, Me.I’m puzzled, because I know this Me well. It is the M...
Weekly Contest #271
In times of mass casualty, we come together. As helpers, we’re the ones who pull people out of burning houses and highway wreckages and hold their hands when they inhale their last breath in the back of an ambulance. I wasn’t expecting to see Bard here, but the need for all hands on deck is mounting. We are suspended right now; its not quite time to swoop in but its coming. Bard looks just as surprised to see me. In another life, we might have harbored low-key embarrassment at being reunited without warning. But that was, well, another life...
Weekly Contest #269
My father found solace in whiskey and rotating girlfriends and Tara found it in shiny things, I think, as she inspects her flagrant cubic zirconium, a promise from her boyfriend Trent.“You think too much,” Tara tells me, even though I haven’t asked her. She’s perched by the window, ring-heavy hand gesturing towards me. “That’s you’re problem.”Her plump body is squeezed onto the space meant to hold nothing but a decorative pumpkin hued pillow (now on the floor) and a small baby aloe plant in an earth-colored pot. The window is open and she as...
Weekly Contest #260
My father has been talking to me a lot lately. Of course, he is a quintessential conversationalist—no mundane chats for him. He isn’t one to participate in the banal back-and-forth about the weather, or the economy, unless there’s something exciting to discuss. A tornado coming, perhaps. A stock market drop. Not that all his talking points are intense either, although lately they have been. Lately, his words come in written form, as if he can’t bear to wait until we are together to say what’s on his mind. His thoughts pour into emails and te...
Weekly Contest #258
The prophecy began with a single photograph crammed amongst dozens in a shoebox, their corners bent and frayed. At the time, it seemed like a random choice for my little hand to grasp just that one, the photo of the plane. Later, I would know it was not. I was 8 years old and my mother’s companion for her favorite hobby: thrifting. Long before it was trendy, my mother loved to climb into our 1970 Pontiac Lemans, jetting off to neighboring towns in search of “treasures”. Yard sales, estate sales, and her favorite—thrift stores—were on the age...
Weekly Contest #251
The soft thumping as Ramona ran her fingers over the book spines sparked an oddly satisfying feeling. She turned slowly, her eyes climbing the never-ending shelves. They seemed to reach the sky and beyond, as if there were no ceiling in this library. Or was it a bookstore? Try as she might, she couldn’t quite focus her eyes well enough to tell. “Am I dreaming?” Ramona asked out loud, to no one in particular. She’d heard about this phenomenon…realizing you were in a dream, and thus being able to control it. What fun! She took in the space aro...
Weekly Contest #235
I tell Emily we’re going to run because I don’t know what else to do. Her dark eyes grow wide, because she thinks we’re going for a jog, which usually means a visit to the park. I know she doesn’t really understand half of what I say to her, but she’s the only one left to talk to. Living in this house has become like living in a mausoleum. Or worse—a silent house of horrors. He barely talks to anyone, and never about Johnny. He rants and raves, but no talking. I would like to. I would like to sit in my living room in the morning, when the ...
Shortlisted for Contest #232 ⭐️
In the summer its Midnight Sun, but in the winter its Polar Night. Two months of darkness! That was David’s way of introducing me to Svalbard.My pre-teen relocation to northern Virginia from Florida had never quite settled in me, both socially and meteorologically. On snow days, when my friends were gleeful with plans to meet at the park to sled, I would opt out for reasons of awkwardness, but mostly: it was too cold. As an adult, I hated the darkness of winter, and I hated driving in precarious weather, and I hated having a job that I could...
Weekly Contest #221
For years, the house had had a secret room, and Justine was the only one who knew it existed anymore. It was maddening, to say the least. A century (had it been more?) yet no one had discovered it. Or her. Justine’s father added the room in the 1920s, a few years before the big crash when everything went south. Her mother, Claire, was a nervous type and the room was meant to be a haven, a quiet sanctuary that would allow Claire to set her jumpy tendencies aside, as if they were a hat she could take on and off. They had all loved the roo...
Shortlisted for Contest #220 ⭐️
Water laps the shore, a slow symphony. In with applause for itself, out with sorrow. Over and over again as I stare, the past fresher in my mind than it’s ever been. And when we’re dead, meet me at the river, Jade said. Promise. I promise, I said back. I can’t remember if we were drunk or high—probably both—but I’ve recalled that moment with clarity for years, although never quite as pellucidly as I am now, with icy spring winds and gunmetal skies and a history so far gone it nearly brings me to my knees. Jade is dead. And I am at the r...
Weekly Contest #209
“I’m taking the summer off,” Lia told me. “I need to start over. I need to leave the past, and if I can’t do that in here”—she touched her fingers to her heart—“then I have to do it geographically.” We were licking our wounds at a bar. Slouched over lacquered pine, this sounded like a good idea at eleven on a gloomy winter night. I told her I would come with her. “Really, Nick?” Lia gushed, her voice as sweet as whatever it was she was drinking. Like strawberries and candy. “I would love that.” We dreamt up all kinds of starry-eyed pla...
Winner of Weekly Contest #205 🏆
Alice was everywhere, until she wasn’t. Just like at first, she was nowhere until she was. The absence of her before I knew she existed, was nothing. Now, the absence of her shrouds everything. Like a guest who never came to dinner; a stormy sky that didn’t deliver. Nothing can wash away the void where she used to be. This is what I’m thinking about the first time I take The Walk without her. I met Alice at a dinner party, the raucous kind with wild guests, beautiful people glittering in late summer air on a second-floor balcony backlit by...
Shortlisted for Contest #203 ⭐️
“It wasn’t the beginning of the end, it was the end of the end. And he knew it and I knew it and only one of us was pretending we didn’t.” This is how I start my story. I’m shotgun in Meg’s car, heading north on a girls’ trip to Maine. We’ve left behind our husbands and children, scratching the surface of our mom-and-wife warpaint to reveal something freer underneath. Maine is going to do this for us. A lifetime ago, Maine broke my heart. But this time, it’s going heal something in me. “Tell me more,” Meg says, her eyes trained on the lo...
Weekly Contest #188
“Good morning, miss.” Her voice was gentle, as was the velvety soft hand on my bare shoulder, but neither could soothe the pounding in my skull. I offered some sort of noise resembling a distressed animal to let her know I was alive. Opening my eyes was too much to ask. “You requested a personal wake-up,” she said, her voice again sliding like butter, and I carefully forced open one eye. “I’m up,” I managed. I could not believe I was hungover. I had done everything in my power to avoid this, I mean, outside of not drinking. I had hydrat...
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