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Weekly Contest #358
I went no higher than the first deck of the Eiffel Tower. I reasoned that I was safe, the worst that could happen might be that I tripped and fell down the metal stairs, but it would be impossible to fall all the way to the ground, since I was protected by railings and girders and the care and foresight of the engineers that built the structure. I was safe.Yet I was unable to shake the irrational fear that I might any second plunge headfirst to the distant ground, there to die an agonizing death. Unbeknownst to my companions, my heart was ra...
Weekly Contest #357
“Strong Start”, was a 21-foot Downeast pocket cruiser, a solid bargain but a little bit “tippy”, according to Harry Tarbuck, Brian’s friend up in Rockland. Brian, living and working in Portland, was not an experienced boater but he trusted his friend’s advice and bought the boat.It was late May, a high-pressure system brought clear blue skies, light wind, and warmth to the Gulf of Maine. It was perfect weather to motor the boat 60 miles down the coast, from Rockland to Portland.In their Portland kitchen, contemplating Brian's plan to go get...
Flecks of gold fell from the sky. It was early October, there was a chill in the late afternoon breeze. Reginald Wilcox sat on a bench in the middle of Russell Square Park contemplating the end of the only life he’d ever known. What next? The British Museum was a grand old building. Wilcox, as head cleaner, with over forty years of service to the Museum, knew every door and window, every passageway, storage space, every nook and cranny. Not to mention the vaults. How could the Museum operate without him? The new operations manager was ...
Weekly Contest #346
Their eyes were focused on the black dot at the end of the tunnel“Remember it’s the journey not the destination,” said Peter Barrett, grinning at Emily Jensen as he did at the start of every leg of the road trip.Day seventeen, fourteen thousand miles into the adventure, and the joke was getting old and so was the view.“How does a worm know which way is up, which way is down?’ said Emily, experiencing a familiar jolt of irritation at not being able to answer the question instantly with a google search.“Let’s speculate, shall we?” said Peter, ...
Weekly 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...
Weekly 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-...
Weekly 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...
Weekly 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...
Weekly 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...
Weekly 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...
Weekly 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...
Weekly 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...
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