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Weekly Contest #364
I can’t be left in a room like this. It’s kidnapping. I never agreed to it. Find me a contract where I said this was something I wanted. You’ll never discover it. And what’s in this room? Giant dollhouses. Giant dollhouses that I can sit and…And do what exactly? Reflect? I can hear music outside. Beautiful music. Is it from a live band or is somebody playing it on a device of some kind? I don’t know. I can’t investigate. Because the door to the room is locked. Each dollhouse has a working refrigerator. The refrigerators are filled with food....
Weekly Contest #363
Finding a wave in the ocean that suits his purpose, he raises his baton and has it dip a little lower. Next to him a towel is held down by books he won’t be reading. One is a biography of FDR. He loves politicians, but he has trouble believing things about them. Had he been born a woman, he would have been a terrific Mayor’s Wife. Or even a First Lady. Instead, he’s a Conductor. He raises the baton and the wave gains height. A surfer moves into its harmony. Back in town, he’s treated to dinner by one of the nine distinguished women that trav...
Weekly Contest #362
She challenged the Fire to a smokehouse marathon.She licked the honey mustard off a wing.She started at dawn.She started again at six.She went through two packs before the eggs got scrambled.She saw her friend Didi walk by and stopped her to talk about the guy down the block who got caught scamming people in Indonesian call centers out of their life savings.She asked Didi for a cig, and admitted that quitting would have to wait until after the marathon.She took a look at the thighs and thought she should have tried something new for the occa...
Weekly Contest #361
The summer Victoria Alloretti turned sixteen, she fell in love with an Alaskan King Crab. The crab’s name was Christopher, and he was not from Alaska, nor was he kingly in any way. He washed up on Second Beach a few days before the 4th of July and when Victoria saw him, she immediately felt a yearning that had never crossed her heart until that very moment. She had been walking the beach in search of shells that resembled the letters in her name, because she was working on an art project. Instead, she came across a crab who she was sure was ...
Weekly Contest #360
I took a photo last night of my father’s kidnapper. We were all at the carnival and Christopher had gone to grab a snow cone. I didn’t want one, because my stomach was bothering me. I had gone on the Tangler too many times. There, across from me on the fairway, was the Man. His hair was silver and he had grown out his beard, but I knew who he was. I took out my phone and snapped a photo of him. Immediately, I pulled up an app for posting photos and I posted the photo with the caption “Kidnapper.” By then, Christopher had walked back over wi...
Weekly Contest #359
I knew that heat was closer to sunset than my dance shoes. I knew that he left me a note saying he was lonely. We lived together. We had two rooms and a painting that was half-finished. We bought it at a yard sale along with an air fryer and a doll that was missing a nose. I knew he hated Friday nights. I knew he didn’t like that I worked at Western Appropriate until closing time, because it left him to fend for himself. I knew that he loved how he looked in the bathing suit I bought him when we went to Bradley Lake. I knew that he snuck awa...
Weekly Contest #358
Marina went to war with the wind on the 7th of May in the year 2008. Her mother had first taken up a feud with the wind upon visiting the beach one day only to have sand flung into her hair by the gusts coming off the water. She went home and lit three candles. Words were spoken. A promise was made. She called Marina into the living room and had her sit in front of the candles melting quickly on the coffee table that was made out of repurposed driftwood. “Devochka,” she said, “We are now and forever will be at war with the wind. The war wil...
Weekly Contest #356
We decided we had to move Saturday. The weather had been so nice Monday thru Thursday, and then on Friday clouds would appear. On Saturday, it would rain and the rain would continue until early Monday morning when the sun would come out again. It was cruel. The weather was taunting us. We had to respond. Bullies must be stood up to. It doesn’t matter if they’re meteorological. Such is the story of how we changed Saturdays to Mondays. Now, Mondays would be rainy as would Tuesdays (sorry Tuesdays), but Wednesday straight on thru Sunday would b...
Weekly Contest #354
Everything about the decision made sense but the living of it. When your children and your grandchild all live within a few minutes of each other, you move wherever that is as well. It doesn’t matter that you left Rhode Island when your last child left for college even though there really wasn’t any “leaving,” because they went to the local university. You felt as though you had done your job, and you were ready to pursue your dream of living in California. Not LA, not a chance, but a town about an hour outside the city that looked like the ...
Weekly Contest #353
She babysits her grandchildren on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Her daughter works third shift and when she leaves at eleven, someone needs to watch the three girls until their father gets home from his job at the supermarket around eleven thirty. Her son-in-law is up for a promotion, and nobody wants him to jeopardize that, because it’ll mean that they can finally move into that house in Port Ryan with the in-law apartment that she can move into. Her neighborhood, and the street where she raised her daughter and two sons, has rapidly be...
Weekly Contest #352
And you see, you can hold her hand in the limo, if you want. I hold hands in limousines. I get nervous. People get nervous when they start to get things good. My mother never had a good day in her life, but she was never nervous. Buy her a coke and she’s Queen for a Week. So put her in the limo and hold her hand and I won’t say a word. Take her to that nice bistro on Palmer Avenue and ask them to do the Memphis for you with the red glaze. They’ll know what you mean and they’ll know who sent you. She teaches at a private school, doesn’t she? ...
Weekly Contest #351
Confusion couldn’t figure out how one was meant to skate at Rockefeller Center. She didn’t know where to rent the skates. Where the ticket booth was. She didn’t know how long one could skate, or if time limits even existed. She looked down at her nephew, and he yawned. He was too sleepy for ice skating anyway, she decided, and she asked him if he’d like to get some dinner and then go back to the hotel. He agreed, because he was an agreeable child. Confusion had begun to wonder if her nephew might be Agreeable, but her sister had warned her a...
Weekly Contest #350
I didn’t tell my mom I was adopting a dog, because when she was six, a dog bit her, and she’s been deathly afraid ever since. I don’t really like dogs either, but I saw this little one walking down the road, and when I heard it whimpering, I had to save it. It had matted light brown fur, and it was limping a little bit. I remembered my ex-boyfriend telling me that you can’t go near a wounded animal, because it’ll lash out at you, but the dog let me scoop it right up. That seemed like a sign that I was meant to save it. When I got it back hom...
Weekly Contest #349
I do mass for the other infected. Every Thursday and Saturday. We don’t do Sundays. Seems like something from the Old World. The Previous. When I do mass, they come up with their scabs and their grimy eyes and their loose teeth and I bless them. Each of them knows me by a different name. Some call me Father Timothy. Some call me Father Chris. Some just call me Father. The mass is held at a church that is not my church. The priest from this church died in Wave 2, and last I heard, he was seen eating a parakeet under a bridge up near Scovie. I...
Weekly Contest #348
He asked me to marry him on the beach towards the end of March. It was just over forty degrees, and the creature in the sea told me to accept the proposal. I would have accepted it no matter what, but hearing her voice made me feel confident that it was the right decision. After he got up from the sand and kissed me on the cheek, we ordered an Uber and went downtown to sing karaoke. On the way to the bar, I took the shell I’d picked up from the beach and put it to my ear. The voice inside told me to sing Natalie Cole or Gladys Knight. I want...
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