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Weekly Contest #374
This story contains themes of spousal neglect and mental abuse. “Rod, I’m tired. I can’t wash and dry the clothes and take care of the children at the same time. I need your help.” Darlene walked into Rod’s office with their three-year-old daughter, Bobbi Jo, on her hip, the baby in a sling across her chest, and Rod, Jr. trailing behind. Rod sat, as usual, like a king on a throne behind his enormous oak desk, surrounded by political papers and letters. He swiftly placed the one he was reading face down on the closest pile. “Honey, you know ...
Weekly Contest #373
“I’m telling you, you can’t trust him! He’s a liar and a cheat. He’s been sleeping with that girl since she was a minor, my nanny for crying out loud. Divorcing my mother and marrying this girl is a sin. You know this. How can you let him continue as pastor?” “Mary, we understand that you are very upset with your parents’ divorce. Children don’t always understand these situations. Only God knows the truth. The church board has met and decided that the circumstances warrant crediting Pastor Granger’s longstanding service and selfless leadersh...
Weekly Contest #372
Another morning, same old routine. The alarm blares shrilly, too early in Samantha’s bleary-eyed estimation. Scowling, she shuts it off and stumbles downstairs to make coffee for herself, her husband, and her teenage children. Tossing back her morning medication and slowly awakening to the reality of another unrelenting day, she packs everyone’s lunches, unloads the dishwasher from last night, refills the pitcher of filtered water, and heads back upstairs to wake everyone up. Again. She grits her teeth to keep from yelling at them, feeling t...
Weekly Contest #371
Rayla smelled rain and sensed the sinking temperatures through her threadbare polyester sweater. The wind was shifting, and it felt like a storm was coming on. Best find shelter indoors tonight. Rayla wasn’t interested in staying at an official shelter. She didn’t consider herself to be homeless, exactly. She was a nomad, an adventurer, technically unhoused at the moment, but mostly by choice, or so she told herself. Besides, the shelters had bedbug and lice problems and men with wandering eyes and hands. She’d rather take her chances on the...
Weekly Contest #370
I love the smell of the first day of school. It’s a heady mix of recently mopped floors, cold air conditioning, freshly decorated bulletin boards, new school supplies, the latest fashions with the tags just removed that morning, and the hopes and dreams of a new year. The kids pour through the doors of the high school, laughing and shouting at old friends, the freshmen nervously trying to find their classrooms and a familiar face. The clanging of locker doors sounds a cheerful chorus, and even the class bells seem excited to welcome everyone...
Weekly Contest #369
The August sun gleamed off the rich oak desk in the study. The wheat-colored walls were brimming with family photos and mementos of Sophie’s achievements. In pride of place above the computers were framed photographs of Sophie’s Grandmother Ava and Great Grandmother Edie, two women she had met, but they both died when she was very young. Both women shared a soft, kind face, with intelligent, lively eyes. Sophie and her mother Madison had inherited those eyes and the women’s vibrant spirits and sharp, inquisitive minds. At adjacent desks, Sop...
Weekly Contest #368
This story contains themes of death, murder, and sexual violence, with descriptions that might be considered gory by some readers. It is an average Thursday. Most of the world goes about their daily routines, blissfully unaware that, for the Stewart family, this Thursday is a life-changing day. Ashley Stewart, pregnant with her first child, is due to die—car accident. By all accounts, Ashley is a good person, a high school counselor, devoted to the children she serves, excited to start a family. The child, of course, has not even had a chan...
Weekly Contest #367
7:00 pm. Mark should have been home an hour ago. He hadn’t called. Susan was used to it by now. Throughout their ten-year marriage, he would do this—go out drinking with his buddies after work, no matter what other plans he and Susan might have had. So many nights Susan would cook and sit up waiting for him, the carefully prepared meal getting stone cold on the kitchen table, candles in the early days burning down to nubs. By ten o’clock she would eat despondently and put the leftovers away for him, only to be awakened around two or three in...
Weekly Contest #366
This story contains themes of sexual violence, murder, drug abuse, and physical violence. “Sergeant Trask, it’s crazy Mary on line 2.” “Thanks, Cin.” Seargent Charles Trask sighed while staring at the blinking light on his phone. Mary Sullivan had been the bane of his existence for months now. A thin, spry nearly 90-year old, with a halo of white curly hair, Mary looked frail but had a spirit that was tough as nails. Trask bitterly regretted ever giving her his card. Though, in fairness, she had been helpful in catching the gang of kids tag...
Weekly Contest #365
Dear Margaret, I just don’t understand young people anymore. Today, when I stepped out for my afternoon smoke, I saw a young woman with pink-tipped hair and dark clothes in the park across the street, sitting in the pouring rain talking to a flower, of all things. I think she must have been on drugs. Or at the very least, a mental patient. It was disturbing watching her mutter things at the flower, a raggedy old dandelion I think, and then rock back and forth. I found it all very unsettling. I think she had a satchel with her, but I’m not s...
Weekly Contest #364
Maeve awoke with a start on a rickety, lurching train, rattling through non-descript countryside. She had no personal items, no ticket, and no memory of how she got on this train or where it was going. The light in the car was indistinct and almost hazy. Peering over the green vinyl seat in front of her, Maeve noticed that the car was practically empty, with only one other passenger sitting preternaturally still gazing out the window. The woman seemed familiar, her chestnut hair, the slope of her shoulders, but Maeve couldn’t place her. Ever...
Weekly Contest #363
Lani emerges from her home to survey the damage. The sea is still restless, and the skies are sullen. The shore has been completely reformed—new tide pools gouged by the storm’s angry fingers, sandbars offshore where there had previously been none, the little spit separating her property from the neighboring beach resort completely gone. Mother Ocean likes to redecorate when she is angry. The palm trees in their dance of obeisance dropped their coconuts across the beach, peace offerings to her bombardment (and a handy way to spread coconut p...
Weekly Contest #362
The children are coming over with their children, and Ethyl busily prepares a feast for them—biscuits and white gravy, ham, creamed corn, green beans, sliced tomatoes, sweet iced tea, and a cobbler for dessert, peach most likely. Everything fresh and handmade, nothing from a box graces Ethyl’s table. The recipes have been handed down from mother to daughter for generations, measured in handfuls and pinches. The work requires slow and steady hands—shucking corn, snapping beans, slicing tomatoes, pealing and pitting peaches, and carefully bala...
Weekly Contest #361
Izzy Monroe would like you to know that she is an enchanted princess, and she intends to prove it by the end of the summer. She has all the gear—frilly princess dresses in every color of the rainbow, bedazzled tiaras, scepters with ribbons that jump in the air like spells being cast when she twirls them. Well, almost all the gear. She does not have glass slippers as her mother says she is too young for those. Rubbish. Izzy makes do with her white unicorn light up sneakers that flash red and blue every time she steps. She imagines that the li...
My grandparents’ brick home hugs the earth, low and flat like a lazy hound on a hot morning. The row of azaleas leading up the drive, slightly more unkempt than I remember, blooms in welcome. Papa’s blue pickup sits under the carport, in its usual place, but older and more rusted. In days gone by, he would be off in the fields somewhere on his John Deere when I arrived with my mom and sisters, and Grandma would be busy in the kitchen preparing a feast for a small army. Today I drive myself, and they sit in their armchairs in front of the te...
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