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Weekly Contest #340
He appears halfway through a sentence. Unannounced, unintroduced. Just there, on the screen, inside my running line. As if he existed before I wrote him, and I’m merely unlucky enough to have to pin him down now. “This isn’t right,” he says. I keep typing. That usually works. Characters you ignore dissolve. They become background. Set dressing. A name without weight. He stays. “You’re a mediocre writer,” he says. “But even for you, this can still get worse.” His voice comes from the screen as if the laptop is ashamed to transmit it. The webc...
I am the first one awake. This is not because I choose it, but because my body does. Before light reaches the curtains, before the pipes creak or the birds begin their negotiations outside, something in me lifts its head and listens. The house is still breathing. That is how I know the night has not yet let go. I stay where I am. I have learned that movement has consequences. From the floor, I can see the underside of the table, the chair legs like thin trees, the shoes lined against the wall. They smell of outside. Old rain. Stone. The pla...
Weekly Contest #339
I take an orange from a mesh bag. The net is red and rigid, made to keep everything together. I cut the fruit in half. The scent breaks open, sharp and sinful. My stomach reacts before my thoughts do: a brief contraction, as if someone were pulling too tight on a rope. I am standing in the kitchen of the house that once belonged to my mother and now seems to belong to me. It is an awkward truth: I own her things, but not her reasons. The tiles gleam; as if someone had exerted themselves today to wipe away the imprints of a life. My coat hang...
Weekly Contest #338
The museum always smells different at night. During the day it smells like school coats and impatience, like warm dust and cheap perfume. Now—five minutes past five—it smells like wax, stone, and something older that never quite leaves: metal that has forgotten what it was forged for. I stand alone in Gallery 4, keys heavy in my palm. “We’re closing in ten minutes,” echoes softly from the ceiling speakers. I don’t answer. I never do. The voice isn’t for me anyway. It’s for people who still believe museums are about seeing. The last visitors ...
Present The diary lies on the kitchen counter with a note from my mother. “Here you’ll find the answer to the question you never dared to ask.” I pick up the dog-eared diary. It has been used often. The pages are yellowed, some of them coming loose. Many are creased where corners have been folded down. Her death is so recent my grief hasn’t yet had a chance to begin. Or perhaps I already went through that process while she was still alive. It’s the first time I’ve entered her house when she isn’t here. In fact, it’s been years since we last ...
Weekly Contest #337
1. She – Friday morning The bathroom smells of menthol and stale damp. In the corner of the mirror there’s a haze that never lifts, no matter how often I clean it. I can already hear him shuffling on his socks, the rhythm of someone who knows his house but has lost his reason for being there. “Els?” he calls. My hand hovers for a moment above the toothbrush rack. My name is Mara. It feels as if my identity is dissolving now he no longer knows my name. Els being the name of his first wife bothers me less. “Els?” again, a little louder now, a...
Weekly Contest #336
“You’ll be able to say goodbye shortly,” the funeral director says. “But he’s still alive,” she says. The man checks his watch. “That doesn’t change the schedule.” The funeral director strides on, hurried. His face is greyer than that of his average client. Deep grooves in his forehead. Drooping corners of the mouth. But that may be occupational deformation. In his line of work, there is no laughter. His profession is solemn. Oppressive. He has adjusted his character accordingly. Like an owner who slowly starts to resemble his dog, he is sta...
Can you please let go of my hand? I’m not in the mood to pretend everything’s fine. I’m just trying to keep things calm. Maybe we could both try that today. Keep things calm? You mean act like nothing’s wrong? Because holding hands doesn’t feel calm at all right now. Don’t make such a big deal out of it. There’s nothing going on. You always read something into everything. We’re not doing this now. Not at my parents’ party. I read something into everything? I heard you last night. Whatever you think you heard, we’re not having this conversati...
Weekly Contest #335
"I think I know you," a voice says in the half-dark. I flinch and my dog, Luka, barks sharply, nervously, as if he sees something I don't. The park is almost empty. Streetlights cast dull circles of light onto the wet gravel. A man is sitting on the bench. "He's wearing a long black leather coat with matching boots and a hat that keeps his face partly in shadow." Everything about him seems deliberately chosen, as if he didn't simply sit down here but was placed. I walk faster. My breathing quickens. Still, he keeps talking, calm, almost frie...
Weekly Contest #334
The mirror does not lie. It only lies just enough. In the penthouse above the city, it hangs on the wall like a window into another reality: tall, narrow, framed in black glass that never seems to gather dust. Everyone calls it the Mirror, as if it carries a title. As if it is more than an expensive object. But I hear everything. I have been hanging here for years. Bolted in place, calibrated, fed by cables running through the walls like veins. I see light. I measure heat. I read microtensions around eyes, the tightening of a jaw, the sheen ...
Weekly Contest #333
“Hungry!” her stomach screams. “You haven’t eaten in twelve hours.” She doesn’t listen and keeps stirring enormous pots in the hospital’s communal kitchen. Feeding 260 patients every day is no small task. “And an outright hell if you’re not allowed to eat,” she thinks. “Every day I’m surrounded by tens of kilos of food. The smell of stew pushes into my nostrils like a beautifully scented disturbance. My mouth waters.” She wipes the sweat from her face with a dirty dishcloth and works on feverishly. “But I have to hold on. This is the only wa...
“Sir, you’re calling me in the middle of the night. I don’t know you. What do you want?” Arthur sits in his boxers, still half-asleep, slumped in his armchair. He’s holding the receiver of a telephone that exists now only as decoration, no longer connected to anything. On the other end of the line, there is silence. Arthur breathes heavily, as if the weight of the world has settled on his shoulders. “Artuur, it’s me. Don’t you recognize me?” His name is pronounced wrong. Too intimate to be a mistake, too wrong to feel familiar. The emphasis ...
Weekly Contest #332
Like a drenched cat he stands in front of the hospital room door. On the floor a small puddle forms from the rain sliding off him. He cannot remember the last time it stormed this badly. He holds his breath for a moment as if that could postpone what no longer can be postponed. He clenches his left hand so tightly that he feels nothing but pain. Anything to avoid the confrontation. But turning around and walking away is no longer possible. He straightens his back and tries to make himself appear broader: ready for what’s coming. A shiver run...
Weekly Contest #331
Nothing Freezes Faster Than Trust Frozen to the bone, he walks briskly from the gym toward home. The falling snow tickles his collar and crackles beneath his shoes. David looks forward to curling up with Olivia by the fireplace, a good glass of wine within reach, wrapped in her sparkling enthusiasm. The thought alone warms him straight through the cutting wind. He crosses the frozen pond and slips as he steps from the ice onto the snow-covered grass. “Fucking ice,” he mutters to himself. Just as he’s about to get up, he sees something black ...
Weekly Contest #330
“Who here knows what looners are?” Irene had asked earlier that evening. The six former classmates, now fused into three married couples, were gathered for their annual dinner. This time Irene was the host, and she inhabited that role with theatrical devotion. Irene was intense—sometimes a touch too intense. Her husband Bart was the self-appointed chef beverage. A steady man. Exactly what she needed. The voices around the table were loud. There was plenty to talk about. Helen, for instance, was on the verge of tears. She had that particular ...
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