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Weekly Contest #352
The Dark Man I pray as I step across the threshold – both that I’ll find him, and that I won’t – out here in the middle of nowhere, a two-hour’s drive from town where Rob was last seen. Where investigators are still following up on dead-end leads. From the moment he went missing, I guessed Rob had gone off to explore some abandoned house or factory, to take more photos for his book. Had he met with foul play? Was he injured, or trapped somewhere in a locked room? Police found his stolen car halfway between here and town. Many took that as a ...
Weekly Contest #351
Call me Angry. That's not my Christian name, the one Mother penned on my birth certificate. My own contributions to that document focused on the inked imprints of ten tiny toes in a singular impression. If only my fingers, my hands had been similarly preserved, so I might now recall their size, their shape. And remember how, until a few days ago, I could move my fingers freely, separately from one another - to sign a letter, make a sandwich, dial a phone. Oh, the things we take for granted. But I digress... --- Two days ago, on a Tuesday, I ...
Weekly Contest #350
Misguided Monsters It was a foggy, clammy morning as I bumped down the access road on the west side of Ned’s cow pasture. I’d taken the call just after finishing breakfast at the Three B’s, and I knew this one’d be a doozy. I could see the sun through the fog, its sharply-edged white disk hanging in the sky like a too-bright full moon. With the front windows rolled down, I smelled him first – the scent of burning cloth mingled with the stench of rotting flesh. Fortunately, I had a cast iron stomach, so my Three B’s breakfast special was in n...
Weekly Contest #349
The Companions I glanced out the window as night fell. Towering charcoal thunderheads slid low and fast toward Ravenhill House, from across the untended meadows and forests of the estate’s enormous land reserve. The wind rose ever higher, a wall of heavy summer rain behind it. A bolt of lightning flash-bulbed the room in light and shadow– the room’s mullioned window projected across walls, the ceiling, a clutter of dark, dusty furniture, and two strange antique dolls. Then the resonant boom. Everything in the bed chamber shook – picture fram...
Weekly Contest #348
Wrong Number I was surrounded by old housewares, arranged with no rhyme or reason on tall metal shelves. A rusty gramophone horn beside a 1950’s kitchen lazy Susan, beside a 1970’s National Geographic globe, beside a 1960’s Easy Bake oven. Then a shoe box full of tattered, off-white baby-shoes. I was examining a ceramic gravy boat when a loud noise shattered the silence, and I nearly dropped it as I reeled back into a shelf, full of what sounded like dinner plates. A fast-ringing brass bell, I realized, its shrillness amplified by the solitu...
Weekly Contest #347
Down the Drain 1. Slam the door, engage both deadbolts, lean against the heavy, metal, soundproofed billet of a front door I paid four thousand for. Installed yesterday. I'm back in Swinton, terrified, crouched behind a reeking dumpster. I track the telltale blub-blub-blub of his car’s engine, its muffler rusted off, as he idles ever so slowly right to left. Minutes later, the engine’s grumble recedes into the distance, gets lost in a rush of wind through trees... This has been the worst year of my life – restraining orders, calls to the pol...
Weekly Contest #346
Warnings: profanity, threats of violence.Also, the first part is a real-life event that happened to a friend. Vapor Pressure Monday, 7:50 AM Everything happens for a reason. Always. Rain – big-dropped summer thunderstorm rain – hammers the windshield. Flashes of white-hot lightning as my ribs rattle with thunder. I'm in the parking lot, impatient for the Restaurant Store to open in ten minutes. Suzie will be there, and I plan on finally asking her out. But not if I reek of sweat and chopped onions. In the glove box, I find my body spray deod...
Weekly Contest #345
The Blizzard Her eyes shot open. Huntsy was barking. Where was she? What time was it? Then she smelled smoke and sat bolt upright.There, just in front, a tendril of smoke rose from the parlor rug, fueled by a hot ember from the fireplace. She kicked out her foot and knocked the ember back to the grate. The smoke faded, and Huntsy lay down again beneath her chair."Good boy, for waking me up!"Beyond the mullioned parlor window, enormous flakes swirled by. Farther back, trees along the forest’s edge twisted wildly in wind. A drift was piled aga...
Weekly Contest #344
The Chain Letter What a gorgeous Sunday morning! Birds singing, spring flowers, blue sky, sunshine. The neighborhood was quiet, cars parked in driveways or along the curbs of Umbarger Lane. I pulled four days of post from the mailbox and closed the door. I winnowed the business envelopes from the junk and held six pieces of mail. Credit card offer – junk. Political campaign donation – junk. I dropped each into the bin until only one remained. The address was penned in neatly written cursive. A woman’s hand by the look of it. Double-stamped ...
Weekly Contest #343
Edwin’s Funeral St. Anthony’s cemetery was cold and rainy, the clouds above like bruised pewter. Ten of us stood 'round Edwin’s coffin while Father Belderbos led us in prayer. Edwin’s ma wept and blew her nose. His pa, Buford, six foot four and in his best denim, pinched his eyes shut, cheeks wet. A stone’s throw behind us stood forty or fifty gawkers – UFO chasers, mostly. One of them filmed with a small, handheld movie camera. Its motor ticked, frame by frame, above the patter of drizzle on fallen leaves.No one should die a fool – that’s w...
Weekly Contest #342
Shape ShifterSomebody runs into the road. I slam the brakes. The anti-locks vibrate as I skid twenty feet through snow. There's no thump of impact, so I rest my forehead on the wheel, heart hammering.A tall figure, edged in the snow-reflected headlights, looms outside the passenger door. Big guy, looks like, standing motionless. I open my door, fight to get free of something entangling me. I’ve forgotten my seat belt, that’s how out of it, how scared shitless I am. My hands tremble while I unbuckle, climb out, hurry around the back. My boot ...
Weekly Contest #341
Forgotten Memories Some apartment buildings have names, like the Vendome in Brooklyn or Malden Towers in Chicago. But here at 1307 Overlook Street, where I spent my childhood in the blue-collar town of Burnside, there was just a three-story red brick building of apartments. Only the four-digit street number identified it, visible as well-patinaed copper numbers anchored to bricks above the double wood entrance doors.The rents here were the highest in Burnside because of the dramatic view out back. The backyard lawn ended at a chain link fenc...
Weekly Contest #340
A Harrowing Walk Home Priscilla stepped outside and breathed in the stifling summer heat. She’d finished her shift in the kitchen at Nick’s Diner and looked forward to a relaxing evening at home. Her favorite show was on the telly tonight, and she'd make it there just in time.Yet something was troubling her as she stood alone in the back alley just behind Nick's.“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” she said to no one in particular. “But my resume’ is a bit sparse on the grittier roles. Can we start this over? With a bit more pizzazz?”-----Thu...
Weekly Contest #339
The Reincarnation of Alastair Chamberlain1.The antique Frodsham mantle clock chimed eleven as I removed the infuser and sipped my tea. Alastair served only the finest Darjeeling in his flat, drunk from antique 17th century China cups.Alastair and I have been friends for years, ever since he moved here to Royal Estate Assisted Living. If I had to pick his standout quirk, it’s his obsessive compulsion about the precise arrangement of everything in his well-appointed flat, measured down to the millimeter. And given his expensive tastes, I wasn...
Weekly Contest #338
The MatchmakerI opened the Collected Works of Edgar Alan Poe and began to read. Near my chair, a large iron radiator creaked, hissed, and smelled of heat. Basking in its prodigious output, my toes had thawed and were now toasty warm. At my feet sat a packed lunch and a thermos of hot tea, but it was still early – ten o’clock – as I plowed through “The Telltale Heart” on my way to “The Cask of Amontillado.”On this snowy winter morning, I had enjoyed a mug of strong coffee with a big breakfast fry up before bundling up and trudging through the...
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