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Weekly Contest #50
“So, Susan,” Bill asked, “How do you not like Shakespeare?” “I’m just not fond of him,” Susan said. “I’d prefer Hemingway if you’d like to know.” She played with her silverware, wondering why they were in this overpriced restaurant. They probably shouldn’t be here even though they’d hardly seen each other all summer, and this was their end of summer reunion dinner. Still, she had just gotten through buying her books, (three hundred dollars for one stupid textbook for crying out loud!), paying for her dorm room, and a pair of two-h...
Weekly Contest #47
Today, you packed a bag. It doesn’t have much in it. A pair of shorts, a shirt, clean underwear. Things you’ll need when you go to your friend Tom’s house. You’re in your bathing suit and black socks. He has a pool you’ve been dying to get into it. You’re dying so much you can feel the cold blue water as you sink to the bottom. Actually, it’s not that cold, but it still refreshes. You like how sounds come to you so slowly underwater, how it cradles you. It’s so peaceful. You don’t even like Tom very much. He’s a bit of a bully, to be honest,...
Weekly Contest #45
I’m not going to have a good story this week. I’m just not. My apologies. I’ve waited too long over a subject that is too hard to write about. Racism. I just can’t come up with anything heroic or life-changing. I had a week too. But my thoughts and words stumble along instead, sentences incomplete, hanging there. All these conversations with no resolution or conclusion. Write a story about inaction, I think. There’s irony for you. I’m pushing the deadline because I can’t get started. I could tell about how I once offended a friend by telli...
Weekly Contest #44
Robert walked along the sidewalk, heading home, such as it was. In one hand was a sack of the potatoes his mother asked him to go buy. With his other hand he shoved his bag of camphor he wore as a necklace down into his shirt. He did this because Maria, who lived in the next block over was heading his way. He was fourteen years old and the smell was awful. It reminded him of the old lady down the street that owned all those cats. But his mother said it would protect him against getting sick. God help him if he argued with her. She had the bo...
Weekly Contest #42
No, sir, I can’t grant that wish. I don’t care if you did free me from this lamp. I have rules now and the one you asked for isn’t happening. If you’d like to send me back into the lamp so be it. Why won’t I do what you ask? It’s because I’ve been asked before and the ending still haunts me. I’m happy to tell it to you though. You might as well know what it is you’re asking. One day a man found my lamp in a thrift shop. I will call him Tim. Just an average guy, much like you. Took the lamp ho...
Weekly Contest #41
The electric cart was quiet, yet it broke the venerable, deep silence of the forest. It stopped, not in a field of grass, but of concrete. Lines marked parking spaces for cars long gone. “Are you sure this is the place?” Bill asked. Sebastian answered, simply as always, “Yes.” They got out, walking past a faded sign that once had said Rainbow Springs State Park. No birds sang. Just the sound of insects buzzing. Bill wasn’t surprised, not these days. He took readings of the air and saw dark thunderclou...
Weekly Contest #34
My name is Jeannie and I need help, which is why I’m in this therapy online group. Better for me to meet this way, although the virus peaked and the worse over. It’s not as if anyone will believe this anyway. Nevertheless, this is my story. If nothing else, you can feel superior I suppose. You can say you’re not insane like I apparently am. Except it’s all true.I blame my damned cat. Stupid thing! If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be in this predicament. I had to clean out my closet and tear up the rug. All because she thought my closet ...
Weekly Contest #33
“When are you going to change your hair style?” asked the man, whose name I no longer remember. He was my hairdresser, and this was 1989. It was not a good time in my life. Sometimes a major change in hard times is necessary. Refresh, recharge, start over again. Sometimes that’s a bad idea.“What’s wrong with my hair?” I asked him, thinking Jesus what isn’t wrong with me? I could go through the list. I had been let go-oh hell let’s not sugarcoat it. I was fired because I didn’t have the experience my boss wanted. My feeling about that, rightl...
Weekly Contest #32
Michele skated along the sidewalk. “Come on Pauline, hurry up! They need us in Parnasus!” Pauline skated along with her, looking about. It was all familiar. The alley ran the length of a block and separated houses from the furniture factory on the other side. No one ever used it. Indeed, the only one who ever saw them was Mrs. Ramsey, whose house was next to the factory. Sometimes she spoke to Michele to say hello or be careful. She was elderly, stiff, and quite formal. The last time had been to tell her off. Michele had wandered ...
Weekly Contest #28
At a hard time in my life I found him again. Like fate. I knew Bob from high school, and we had gone out on a few dates. Now it was 25 years later, and we had reconnected on social media. If this was Reader’s Digest the story would go on to say old lovers reunite. One would almost be able to hear the “aww’s” coming from the countless readers around America, probably the globe. But it doesn’t tell you the rest of the story. I was two years post-divorce and lonely. I’m sure he was too. At that time my boys were nine and six. ...
Weekly Contest #27
“I’m not sure about this,” John told me. “It’s been a very long time.”“I don’t think we have a choice anymore,” I told him. John is a friend of mine and now about to be my client. “You fell.”He looked away from me. “Yes. My balance is getting worse.”I knew it was. It was why, at the age of 50 he was trying braces in the first place. He hadn't worn them since he was a kid. But cerebral palsy accelerates old age, accelerates osteoarthritis. Tight hip muscles had turned his legs in, so he tripped over his own feet if he wasn’t careful, walking ...
Weekly Contest #24
My God she is being such a bitch.“So” Ryka said, "The man died and on the third day walked out of the tomb. Another zombie story is what this sounds li “It isn’t a zombie story! He was living. Zombies don’t live.” “They walk-“ “They’re dead!” Why couldn’t she understand? “They rot. It’s an evil spirit that animates them. He was alive, as you and me are.” “And he said this is my body and my blood, eat and drink it. You have to admit that is very strange.” “It’s symbolic,...
Weekly Contest #23
He’s going to make himself sick. “Alex, make sure you eat some fruit too. That is an awful lot of fondue you’re eating.” He doesn’t eat enough fruit and vegetables so adding cheese doesn’t always help his system. It was Christmas Eve and we were at a party. It was me, my two boys, my parents, my brother, his daughter and wife. That was our side. On her side were her parents, her niece and nephew, and her sister. My brother, Mike, had invited us to go up to his winter cabin in North Carolina. In these stories, cabins are always in the middle ...
Weekly Contest #20
I had just gotten played. By a sixteen-year-old. “What do you mean he’s failing all his classes?” Then I remembered I was at work and it was a small office. Even at the best of times I have a loud voice. “Wait. Let me go outside.” Behind our building is a small yard enclosed by a chain link fence. I paced, probably resembling a bear in a cage. An angry bear in a cage. “You didn’t check the online school app?” asked his caseworker. Whatever her name was. Mrs. Burnett. The caseworkers tend to blend over the years. Although I r...
Small things. They’re often the beginning of some great occurrences. For example, someone realizes a milkmaid sick with cowpox won’t get smallpox. A man notices mold in a petri dish is killing bacteria. A woman refuses one day to sit in the back of the bus. They cause an avalanche into the world or into your beliefs. In Sebastian’s case it was a bad hard drive. I interviewed him in my office. I explained we were recording. Sebastian stood looking at my M.C. Escher drawings on my wall. He seemed to be both puzzled and fasci...
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