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Weekly Contest #378
The scene could have been anywhere. But it was Boston. The year could have been anytime. But it was 2026. The figure could have been anyone. Their height was somewhere between tall and short, their hair somewhere between blonde or red or black or brown. Their eyes could have been dark or light. Their gender indeterminant. They moved through the crowd and their clothes kept shifting, a green dress, a black suit, a cream sweater. Even their movement was fluid like water slowly settling over a flat surface. The girl on the other hand had always...
Weekly Contest #263
“You have one of those faces you know.” “What?” The young man gasped out, his eyebrows raising behind a mop of dirty blonde hair. His was a handsome kind of face. Easy smile that crinkled those honest blue eyes. He looked young, but they always sent them young. The older ones were too smart, too wary or worldly to come anymore. “The kind of face that…” I paused and ran a finger over his full lips, drawn into a scowl as he tried to shift out of reach only to find the silk at his wrists didn’t go that far. “People trust.” It was a poor desc...
Weekly Contest #203
Penny for your Thoughts There was the sensation of falling, but not the type of falling that was only a slight drop in your stomach before the ground came roughly up to meet parts of your body you’d have preferred to remain out of the dirt. No, this was falling that felt like flying, like there was this infinitesimal moment when you could forget that gravity applied to you. Everything seemed to be happing frame by frame. Each second dragged out into minutes, perhaps hours as my brain dashed thoughts together was no clear direction. Falling...
Weekly Contest #186
Today I feel. Like my heart is a bird and my chest is a cage of bone. I feel like my heart is beating itself bloody against the wall of ribs and I’m gasping from the pain of it, but I cannot stop. Trapped. The word is trapped. I’m trapped as the world spins around and around, around me. Everything is too bright, too loud, too much. Don’t be stupid, you can’t write something like that. Someone is going to think you’re crazy…or at least more insane that they already think you are. Mom was right, you have to keep yourself to yourself, don’t bit...
Weekly Contest #150
Zero, Zero, One “Please…don’t.” She begged, “Don’t do this.” Her voice cracked as her hand reached out and stopped just short of touching me. “Please, I can make it work, I just need more time.” More time, more time was all they ever asked for. It was never the thing I could give them. “SAI is so close. So close, just a few more weeks and I’m sure I can make it do what Mr. Simmons needs it to do. Please, Jack are you even listening to me?” “I’m sorry Isla, but it’s over.” I said my voice didn’t waver, didn’t stray from that careful cadence ...
Weekly Contest #121
Still Morning The birds always trilled the song of morning during the spring and summer, but during the fall and winter even they would fade into the silence that hung over Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery. It had always been a small cemetery, with a pond in the back corner and a tract of protected land to the left. The wrought iron fence that faced the street had long since been overrun with vines and scrub-brush. No one was buried anymore in Our Lady of Mercy, it was too full and had been for nearly a hundred years. The residents seemed to like ...
Weekly Contest #106
Born of Water I remembered the day the merfolk surfaced. I remembered what I was doing, what I was wearing and what I had been eating in that stuffy little diner absently watching the local college football game on TV. I wasn’t a local, I was just passing through, eighteen years old, fresh out of high school and driving across the country thinking that maybe along the way I could find myself. I was watching the game for lack of anything better to stare at, absently picking at my onion rings and I remember thinking that they were a bit too g...
Weekly Contest #103
Fire in the Sky “It’s you!” The voice said behind me and I resisted the almost insurmountable urge to turn around. “Hey! You ginger.” Okay, now I knew he was talking about me and he was going to get an earful for using that slur. I was not being dramatic Mom, the use of the term ginger when hurled at a person with red hair was derogatory. I didn’t have to take something like that laying down. I didn’t have to smile and batt my red lashes and wait for them to comment on how freckled my skin was or ask if I had a soul or not. Please. This w...
Weekly Contest #89
What is Truth Kathrine St John looked at the photograph that was blown up to twice life-size showing only the head of another old woman with a placid look to her face and empty blue eyes. Kat’s gaze drifted forward past the line of black clade people with heads bowed and sobbing quietly to where the handsome oak casket sat stoically in front of the room. She knew what she would see when she looked into the casket. The line shuffled forward and Kat’s eyes moved again to the three middle aged siblings standing stiffly beside the casket, numbl...
Weekly Contest #83
Eye of the Raging Storm The melody she sang was so hauntingly beautiful that it entranced the waves. They crashed against the shore desperate for her. They longed to reach her and drag her into their embrace, but they knew she was a creature of the sky and that to do so would doom her. The waves wept with sorrow as she sang, the rain splashed against the tin roof of her dwelling and the wind pulled restlessly at her shutters. Still she sang, oblivious to the torment she caused. Lightning forked across the sky, brightening the late afternoon...
Weekly Contest #76
The Silent Partner “Okay, let’s start with something easy. What’s your name?” Aberdeen asked it with faked sincerity as she leaned forward bringing her elbows up onto the table, drawing her face closer. The man across from her lifted his eyes only as high as her mouth, “Winston Churchill.” “Really? Winston Churchill. That was the best you could come up with?” Church shrugged, “What can I say, you’d be better off taking it up with my mother.” The corners of Aberdeen’s mouth drew into a frown, she leaned back and crossed her legs. “Fine. ...
Weekly Contest #72
Exercise in Futility I stood in line with all the other Drainers. I had my hands clenched into fists at my sides, my dirty, bitten fingernails cut into my palms as I watched the knights patrolling the ramparts above us. Their metal faces were blank and expressionless. My stomach quivered as the line slowly shuffled forward. Everyone from the Ghettos was drained once in their life. After that we got to live on the other side of the wall where we were happy. You were assigned and lived in bliss, all the propaganda said so. I should have relish...
Weekly Contest #65
Forged in Fire I knocked on Blake’s door, dancing back and forth from foot to foot and silently cursing myself for not bringing a jacket. The last day in October was cold in Massachusetts this year. Blake swung the door to his bookshop open and cracked a smile that to me looked quite comical considering the cotton ball beard and pointy hat he was wearing that matched perfectly with his royal blue with yellow star robes. “You look dashing.” I told him as he let me in and closed the door behind me. “I see you didn’t bother with a costume, ...
Weekly Contest #58
Thread of Destiny I have always hated elevators. It goes without saying really that being suspended in a metal box in an open shaft gave me a distinct feeling of vertigo whenever I was inclined by social pressure to ride in the death traps. I hated the feeling of that little jerk right at the beginning when the cab first started to move and then the counting beeps that signified just how fast the floors were passing by. I hated the little bounce whenever someone got on or off. I hated the way the doors closed and gave that little warning to...
Weekly Contest #55
Ruins of Rome I had imagined that dying would be so much more dramatic. Like you would die and then there would be this bright light that would invite you to heaven and you’d get to see everyone you loved and lost. That’s what I signed up for, not this. I woke up like normal, rising from my bed and listening to my neighbors shouting at each other through the thin walls. They had what was classically a love/hate relationship, each too addicted to the other to realize that they just didn’t work. I was single. I had always been single because u...
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