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Weekly Contest #333
Dinner for Two Minnie Ayers certainly didn’t look the part. I'd expected some dark-eyed, mysterious sorceress with flowing robes and long, brightly painted nails. Instead, she was punctual, direct, and dressed in her nine-to-five secretary's dress. As she stepped gingerly about my third-floor flat on Potts Street, she reminded me of Nancy Drew in a mystery novel – aged twenty years and burnished of all the affects of childhood.“Something happened here,” she said, raising her gaze to the ceiling, beneath which a dark wooden support beam ran h...
Weekly Contest #332
A Killing Rainby Scott SpeckAt eight A.M. the Politburo interrupted radio – every station. Twenty minutes later they commandeered television – every channel. Aleksandr was wheeling his bike out the door when the emergency public address system squealed and crackled to life.Then a female voice spoke. It was her he realized, the voice chosen in the direst of circumstances. She was… Motherland – all-knowing, confident, demanding obedience. Her every syllable echoed off like a ghost among the gray buildings.Complete all preparation by twelve o’c...
Weekly Contest #331
A Magical Evening Heavy snow continued to fall. I watched from the warmth and security of my third-story flat while the window’s many mullioned panes crackled and creaked in the wind. Thick snow had already blanketed the neighborhood’s stately homes, and all I could see of the street lamp across Potts Avenue was a glowing yellow smudge. Then it winked out, along with the lamp on my sideboard. Power outage. Fortunately, I’d stocked up on both wood and coal for the fireplace. In the near darkness, I drew hard on my cigar, and its hot ember rev...
Weekly Contest #330
Late Night Caller by Scott Speck “Allen, do you still love me?” The whiskey glass leaps from my hand and explodes on the floor, but I barely notice. The phone is tight against my ear. “Lucy? Wait… How...” I stop myself, embarrassed at my own stupidity. Allen, you’re a goddamn defense attorney. Act like one! “Why did you leave me out here? Here, Allen, where it’s so… cold…” Over the phone, wind is blowing through trees. I know how bitterly cold it is out there. Hours after getting home, my swollen red toes are still itching and tingling....
Weekly Contest #329
Serendipityby Scott Speck October, 2025My death came suddenly. It happened one sunny, windy day in October while I whistled a merry tune and strode down Main Street. The air around me was filled with the delicious aromas of wood fires and fermenting apples. The sidewalks and streets were alive with the skitter of vividly colored leaves.Then, ten feet in front of me, a man appeared from a doorway. He was short and thin and, most alarmingly, wore a black ski mask. I stopped dead in my tracks as he sprinted past me and was gone. Then a policema...
Weekly Contest #328
The Inevitability of Fateby Scott Speck1.In the candlelight of the tent, my tarot reader glowed upon her throne. Beneath her tattered red turban, one eye bored into mine, while the other appeared lifeless, hazed over long ago with a cataract. She seemed a strange kind of paradox - her manner imperious, her wrinkled appearance almost hag-like.I was here on the insistence of my friend Linda, who had visited Madame Toussant the previous weekend at the Renaissance Faire. She claimed Madame was the real deal, that she would provide valuable insig...
Weekly Contest #327
Cat in a Treeby Scott Speck1.It was Halloween night, and so windy that he couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t the wind’s roar through the trees that kept rousing him, but instead, his love of the windy weather, itself – a fascination that had brought him, a year ago, to rent this apartment – the attic floor of a quite large, old house, divided long ago into three main floors of apartments. With only thin layers of insulation, wood, and asphalt shingles above him, he enjoyed living that much closer to the sky.By one o’clock, he was finally drifting off...
Weekly Contest #326
Guilty Conscience, by Scott SpeckIt’s 3 AM. The street below is quiet, deserted, but I still can’t sleep.Folks need months to adjust to the noise of the city, my landlord said when I signed the lease. Tonight, though – this late – it’s quieter than the country in winter. Across the street, rank upon rank of brownstones extend into the distance, silhouetted chimneys smoldering. One coal-black column obscures the spiked crown of the Empire State, while Chrysler’s summit is unobscured. I don’t deserve my own place – so luxurious, and all paid f...
1.Somewhere, invisible to her in the fog, an ocean still roared with last night’s storm. The air about her was impenetrable – cold, clammy, and so thick she couldn’t see the ground. Her morning walk had become a labor, for she had to test each step before taking it – across hillocks and divots, past unseen foxholes, through tangles of beach grass.Then, at last, her feet sank into sand – blessed sand. She smelled the pungent decay of seaweed, and her next step burst the watery sack of a bladder wrack. There, too, was the scent of salt, the sa...
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