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Weekly Contest #318
My father enjoys listening to soft rock while I give him his bath. He wears one of his old bathing suits while I do it, and handles the parts the suit covers only after I leave him be for a few minutes. When you’re caring for a relative, there can’t be any shame or pride, but my father has plenty of both. I give him the minutes that he wants, and then I come in to towel him off and turn down the radio. I won’t turn it off completely until he falls asleep. I bring it into his bedroom and place it by the window. A caller is asking the DJ to pl...
Weekly Contest #317
I was eating strawberries in the tub when the doorbell rang. Throwing on my blue diamond robe, I dripped all the way to the front door where an old woman was waiting with a basket of apples. For a moment, I wondered if she was going to offer me a trade. My strawberries for her apples. She was wearing a large cloak, and her face was turned down. I realized that this must be the strega who had moved in next door. We hadn’t had a chance to meet, and there was a note on my fridge instructing me to bake croissants for her. The trouble was that cr...
Weekly Contest #316
Two months before I ended a three-year relationship with my boyfriend, we went over to his best friend’s apartment and convinced ourselves that we were deeply unhappy. We were deeply unhappy, but until that night, we were debating the reality of our situation. After all, what does an unhappy relationship look like? Does it look like boredom? Does it look like weeks without sex? Does it look like leaving the same dirty dish in the sink every week waiting to see which one of you will wash it? We didn’t know. We were contemplating so many thing...
Weekly Contest #313
The zebras are the ancestors of the zebras released from Hearst’s personal zoo. Katy explains this to me on the bus that takes us up the mountain to the castle. We’re doing a tour of the kitchen and the dining room and who knows what else? The museum at the bottom of the hill explains the life of the newspaper magnate in short bursts punctuated by black and white photos. I assume it will be hard to spot the zebras, because there are over a dozen grazing mere feet from the curved road. Katy gets excited the way that she did when we were child...
Weekly Contest #312
Hemingway’s job was to scare off the hornets. He stood a mere three feet high, and he was designed to resemble a pelican. Studies had found that hornets are, for some reason, terrified of pelicans. Hemingway’s creator was a woman from the southern part of Delaware. She was twice-divorced with one child from her first marriage. She named the robot pelican Hemingway, because during the summer, she would reread a Hemingway novel from her stash in the spare room of her house. Whenever a problem with one of her inventions arose, she’d take a brea...
Weekly Contest #309
The first wound appears on Tom’s back. A little below the neck. He panics, because Tom instantly assumes this is it. The big one. He was born after the epidemic had peaked, but it never leaves the back of his mind. Once a week, he watches a documentary about New York during the 80’s and he wonders what it would be like to lose all your friends so quickly and in such devastating ways. Without hesitation, he rushes to urgent care. He hasn’t lived in Denver long, so he hasn’t had time to get a new general practitioner. After several hours in th...
Weekly Contest #308
My skirt was violet. It was procured for me by one of the St. Fire girls from a vintage store near the Cave. The St. Fire girls prefer to travel in packs of four. Each group has a girl who can shoot, a girl who can speak several languages, a girl who climbs trees, and a girl who laughs at jokes that aren’t funny. I was working at the cemetery when one such group approached me. In this group, the girl who laughs at unfunny jokes was named Eddie, and she was the one who held out the skirt for me. “To wear,” she said, “At Won’t It All Be Fine?”...
Weekly Contest #307
My father’s ghost assured me I wouldn’t fail the test.Sitting next to a girl who liked to cheat by writing things on her tampon package, I wondered if I should feel more or less guilty than her. She was making an effort to do the wrong thing, whereas I had no say over whether or not my dead father appeared to me during an exam.The girl’s name was Chima, but everyone called her Chi Chi. She lived in the next dorm room over from me, and for most of the previous spring semester, she had been sleeping with my roommate until she decided that she ...
Weekly Contest #306
For Sunday, Other Items Should Be Purchased on Wednesday Grapes Take a photo when the man with blue gloves steals a grape. Catch him in the act. Don’t be discreet about it. Let him see you take the photo. He’ll pop a grape into his mouth right in front of you. Is it a seduction? Are you able to be seduced? There are cameras all over the store. Who does he think he is nourishing himself in front of you in such a way? Security will show up and ask you why you’re taking photos of him, but they won’t ask him what he’s done. They won’t inquire ab...
Weekly Contest #305
Sarah quit in front of the birthday cake. The cake was for Porter. His birthday was over the weekend, which meant they would have cake for him either on Friday or Monday. This time, it was Monday, because his birthday was on a Sunday, but there were no hard and fast rules about these kinds of things. There was a cake committee, led by Maura, and all cakes were purchased from the nearby supermarket. I have watched dozens of birthdays happen here. I’ve listened to people with badges and bad haircuts sing “Happy Birthday” off-key-- slowing down...
Weekly Contest #304
The reservation is a standing one. Seven o’clock every Thursday. He meets Grace and Brian and Lucinda and Terry and Matt and Matt and Michael. They have their usual table. Grace doesn’t eat. They don’t talk about Grace not eating. She misses when they could smoke indoors. Grace has never smoked in a restaurant. It was outlawed before she was old enough to partake. That doesn’t matter. She knows people used to be able to do it, and she misses when that was the case. When it was possible. The reservation is under his name.Archie Norris.It’s no...
Weekly Contest #303
My father was convinced that Clyde Barrow had a son. It didn’t matter what computers told him. He couldn’t believe that a man who’d made his way into history books could fail to procreate. Whether or not the son would have been the product of the passion between Clyde and Bonnie Parker was not something my father gave a lot of thought to. This might be the result of him knowing that you would have an easier time proving that a woman never had a child, whereas with a man, it was always at least somewhat possible. Late at night, parked behind ...
Weekly Contest #302
Pulling up to the house, the first thing I noticed was the pirate on the front lawn. If I told you I remembered the name of the boy in my car, I’d be lying. Was he a man? He was. I say “boy” because I felt bad for him, and when I’m filled with pity, men become boys. I asked about the pirate. He told me not to worry, because the pirate was from Iceland and Icelandic pirates are known to be docile in the winter months. They have to be. They’re freezing to death. I asked the name of the house, but it was unpronounceable. The boy took a piece of...
Weekly Contest #301
There was no reason for him to continue living in the garage.It was one thing to stay together during a pandemic, but the restrictions had long since eased, and they had recently surpassed the awkward milestone of having been broken up longer than they’d been together. Whitney justified Dan’s pervasive presence in her life with a bevy of excuses that made her throat itch.She didn’t have a car so why not put the garage to good use.It was impossible to afford a house or even an apartment these days.Dan had grown to love the island, and it woul...
Weekly Contest #300
A century from now, it will be burned to the ground by a horde of zealots. They will believe in modern fashion and old-fashioned ideals. I’m glad I’ll never get to meet them. My children might--if they live an abnormally long life. Their father told me when we finalized our divorce that at the very last moment of his life, he would forgive me all my sins. Yes, he had a god complex, but he was also a god, so the complex comes with the territory. His name was Shamash, and he was the Babylonian God of the Sun, who was killed by Sin, the Goddess...
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