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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 sound...
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 th...
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 ser...
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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
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...
Weekly Contest #360
9:00 am June 27, 1864. Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. 15 miles north of Atlanta. It has been two months since we left Chattanooga, Tennessee with General William T. Sherman heading for Atlanta, Georgia and the heart of the Confederacy. We are the Rock River Rifles, Company I of the 34th Illinois Infantry, a hardy bunch of volunteer Union soldiers. We are strong, independent men from rural Illinois, raised on farms and hard manual labor. Men of our word, faithful to God and country, it was our privilege and honor to answer President Lincoln’s ...
Weekly Contest #359
Every day I pace circles around this box, my muscles tightened knots bearing heavy, invisible weights. Twenty paces from one end to the other, I wear a tight, tidy circle on the floor with my daily rounds. The tap, tap, tap of my feet and the rush of my breath are the only noises in the place. Like a freshly caged tiger, I wonder why I am here; what I did wrong; where my companions are. As it is, this claustrophobic box is my home, and solitude is my only friend. The golden-brown wood floor creaks beneath my feet as I walk. I ha...
Weekly Contest #358
The rain falls angrily on our clay tiled roof, appropriate for the eve of pharmakopia. I see it as the tears of the gods condemning the barbarity of it all, but they see it as approval. We have not had rain in weeks. The farmland is filled with shriveled nobs of indistinguishable plant matter; the animals’ bones show through their hides as they lose the energy even to flick away the flies. This rain will be seen as a blessing, an encouragement to keep following tradition. Tomorrow, when I reach my fourteenth autumn, they will select me for t...
Weekly Contest #357
This story contains themes of mental health and intimate partner violence. Celia’s been spending more time at home lately. Don’t get me wrong; I love spending time with her. Having her home makes me so happy that I spin around in circles and my tail won’t stop wagging. She is by far my favorite human. But something’s been a little off with her recently, and I can’t quite put my nose on it. We’ve been together since I was a pup, and I don’t remember much about life before her. I just know that Celia makes everything better. Long walks i...
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