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Submitted to Contest #333
"Let's not make a scene," I said.This happened episodically, but normally at home or in the car, tactical and private; this was strategic and raw, laid bare before the jury of our peers.My wife did a Shonda Rhimes. “I can’t stand this marriage anymore. We have nothing in common. I don’t care about your frigging book, and I’m fed up listening to you bleat on about your writing. You’ve become a selfish bore and I want you to leave.”The restaurant shrunk around us, the light dimmed. My wife sat opposite me at the secluded two-top but seemed a l...
Submitted to Contest #324
Thinking back on things, it was probably Mark's last gig in Singapore and he deserves to know what happened even if he might find the truth hard to handle. Mark, the Scuba diving instructor was also an Englishmen; one of those free-spirit nomads that ended up in Southeast Asia and bummed around on boats from one place to the next. The boat was an ugly tub, one-time luxury yacht turned live-aboard, stripped of its fineries. We were anchored in a small cove off Pulao Linga, an isolated Malaysian island in the Riau archipelago four hours motor-...
Submitted to Contest #323
The NASA ground control team in Houston watched with awe as the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked flawlessly with the International Space Station. It was an important mission, hastily arranged, so the ground team were relieved when Chief Science Officer, George Maddox, engineering genius and all-around nice guy opened the Quest Air Lock hatch, smiled at the ISS on-board camera and emerged into Unity Node 1.The Houston team high-fived.“Why is Maddox like a mushroom?” said the EECOM, a junior member of the ground control team.“No idea,” said Fli...
Curtis township, population 504, was located at the end of a long road that wound through hills to a lake hidden in the vast wilderness, and I don't think I'm ever going back there. The leader of the Children's Brigade was a girl, twelve or thirteen, with long blond hair twisted and tied like a warrior; she had the palest blue eyes which focused on the distance beyond here and now. They called her Joan, and she was blessed with heavenly spirit, which she expressed in sparing and righteous ways. When she and her fellow Crusaders arrived in ou...
Submitted to Contest #320
“Charlie, where are you?” My voice was hoarse now. I had neither water nor trail-mix, and Charlie had my jacket, it was freezing cold, and my damp T-shirt was clinging to me.Why was it taking so long? I looked up at the starry sky and felt betrayed by the euphoria and contentment that had briefly seized me.Why did he turn off the flashlight? Surely, it was harder climbing in the dark?“Charlie! Charlie!” My cries echoed off the mountain and were swallowed by the forest.Lightning flashed again at the horizon, revealing that I was on a narrow l...
As great and beneficent as America is, Petoskey was small and a mean place in the North Woods where chores turned to labor for children who died young or became adults at an early age. It must have been 1889, because I was sixteen years old. It was the second pigeon harvest since the arrival of the peninsula railroad, and the scale of the Colonel’s spring-time operation spoke to the success of the prior year’s undertaking. In a forest clearing, near the crooked lake, dozens of wagons were loaded with hundreds of empty barrels, all waiting in...
Submitted to Contest #291
T/W. This is based on a true and gruesome story reported in the New York Times in 1898. I could barely keep up with Gustafsson. He handed me his hat and cane, and his heavy portmanteau for safekeeping. “I will need you to do the paperwork when all is said and done,” said Gustafsson, absent-mindedly. When we entered the dimly lit basement, it was like walking into a steam room, and I was struck by the irony and the stench. Gustafsson didn’t miss a beat. He was kneeling beside the body before my eyes had properl...
Submitted to Contest #290
“Oh, but he’s adorable. We can’t just leave him here,” said Sammy, crouched beside the dumpster in the alleyway at the back of our tenement building.I’d caught a glimpse of the thing earlier, and figured it was half dead, dying, and would be dead by now on account of the bitter Chicago cold, but apparently not. I pretended I was deaf.“Poor thing!” said Sammy, who looked up at me. There was no escape. I was forced to acknowledge the dying thing’s existence, but I could only go so far, lest the concession appear a wea...
Submitted to Contest #289
“The room is unfamiliar, I don’t know how I got here.” He was mocking them.“Oh la-di-da. Unfamiliar? Disquieting? Is the room inconvenient too? Do you need the heat adjusted?” Detective Trench leaned in toward the suspect and breathed pepper and garlic at the man with the face tattoo. Sergeant Reilly nearly leapt forward to grab the detective before he did something stupid right out of the gate. The suspect was cuffed, so it would be hard to explain a boxing match to the brass.“Fuck you,” said the...
“Let me take you. It’s no trouble” said Maeve from the front door. She had the Subaru keys in hand, just in case. She wanted so much to help.“I’m fine. I need some air,” said Tyrone.Tyrone was already walking up the hill towards town. It was getting dark. Did he know to walk on the left-hand side, facing the traffic? To wear something bright?Tyrone knew neither of these things. Maeve closed the door. The patrol car pulled up just ahead of him, near the airfield. The lights started flashing.&n...
Submitted to Contest #288
And then there was no light at all in the East, save the flash of lightning out over the archipelago, which gave brief glimpses of the raging Atlantic, of giant monsters rolling directly into the cove, which was our supposed haven from the storm. The Steamship The Royal Tar was tossed around like a child’s toy, and we with it like ragged dolls. The captain stood grim-faced in the pilot house. None of the crew dared say what all were thinking, nor need they; the skipper knew what he was doing, and knew what he had done.“Check the hold, that t...
Submitted to Contest #281
Bairstow is an isolated harbor town at the end of a peninsula on the Coast of Maine, organized as a self-governing Plantation, a law unto itself. It is a blue-collar place, with a dark past and dormant secrets. A place of mutant horrors, of terror beyond the breakwater and reefs, where the warming ocean and over-fishing is denuding the sea floor, urging lobsters north, weakening the Deep Ones, driving them to despair. Ignorant or dismissive of its murky history, nervous tourists slum here in fair weather, looking for elusive monste...
Submitted to Contest #278
He’d once been affable, pleasant, uselessly handsome, but in old age, Peter Clarke’s demeanor was curmudgeonly, his unpleasant puss-faced pout quite repellent. He was the sort of old man that really should grow a beard. ‘Those damn trees. If only that bitch would cut them down so that we had a better view of the harbor. It would improve her view too, a win win. We live next door to idiots.” Peter Clarke and his wife, Patty, lived alone in a pretty cottage overlooking the beautiful tranquil harbor of Bairstow, Maine.“Have you tried talking wi...
Submitted to Contest #275
The knock on the apartment door was so loud that it sounded like rapid-fire gunshots. Simon woke up instantly, and then lay frozen still in his bed though his heart was pounding out of his chest. It was like waking to a nightmare. Bang, bang, again, “Open up, Garcia, open up, this is the Federal Immigration Enforcement Agency, open up the door now”. Simon reached for the wall switch and the naked bulb bleached the room with cold white light. It was 3.15 a.m., according to his alarm clock. He prayed for deliveran...
Submitted to Contest #274
Wessex, it was autumn, the glossy green fields shone in the thin sunlight, the woodland canopy flared orange and yellow. In the nook of a secluded valley, a brilliant silver unicorn grazed on the pastureland. Chalk Newton was bucolic, peaceful, and ever England. Lady Stacey Maxswill stood alone on the carriage path, blocking the way of the crimson-clad hunting party. She recognized most of the huntsmen and women, did business with more than a few, and counted several as friendly acquaintances, so she was shocked at their condescend...
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