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Weekly Contest #253
The Bench The bench was a surprise, an afterlife construct that stood at the crossroads of the path that I had walked down. All around me was an impenetrable mist. But I was not afraid. Birdsong filled the air, and I heard joyous barking in the distance. No one else was sitting on the bench. My heart felt sick, my body ached. I sat down, and waited for a while, curious to see what would happen next. My mother came down the path a few moments later. She, too, had died, some twenty yea...
Weekly Contest #251
"Connie, I'm telling you. There are a dozen browns in a single log," said her mother Lynn. "I know, Mom. You tell me that all the time!" "Well, I'm just saying." Lynn dug into her purse and dug out a ten dollar bill. "Don't go spending it on the first booth," she advised as she handed over the bill. Her daughter's eyes widened. Mom never gave out much money for fun stuff, but the fair was a once-a-year event, full of booths of food and trinkets. The fortu...
Weekly Contest #249
Lights chased each other around the shadows. The bass beat rhythms against the floor. Ears rang for the noise. Drinks spilled, and were guzzled with abandon. And, in the center of it all, Petra waved his arms and kicked his legs to the rhythm, throwing in a little traditional dance moves, showing off. A woman caught his hand, and pulled him away. He swayed his shoulders as she led him out the back of the club, through the kitchen, and out into the night. A rat, disturbed, jumped from its garbage...
Weekly Contest #248
Millie shifted in her wheel chair, and rolled over the slider threshold onto her little porch. Her porch was shared with the woman next door, with a small fence between the two. Millie's half of the porch had a pole with two bird feeders and a hanging flower basket. Around her, several filled suet cages hung from the railing. There is just room left for her wheelchair and a small side table. Time has not been kind to Millie, but she was of an age where she knew her days are numbered. She struggled with her health, but her birds were her sanc...
Weekly Contest #247
I surprised myself. What did they expect I would do? I'd spent decades of following the rules, staying on the narrow track, spouting the party line. I'd done what I was supposed to do, turning in the radicals and insurgents, the ones who questioned our leader growing girth, and the rumors that followed his wayward glances. But now my curiosity began to niggle at me. What was beyond the wall? I had spent so many years teaching children that it was full of monsters that would eat them, or quicksand, or poisonous gasses. I bel...
Weekly Contest #245
I was born and raised in the compound. It was quite large, really, and I felt perfectly safe. No one bothered us, not my brother nor my mother and father. But it wasn't a paradise: oh, no. Brass razor wire coiled along the top of the walls. There were trees, and Mom put in a garden and made my brother and me take turns to mow the lawn. Oddly enough, we used a scythe, mostly because Mom said Daddy wouldn't attract it. It was an easy chore. The blade was also made of aluminum, which, according to my school books, is non-magne...
Weekly Contest #244
"That's what I love about you!" he said, watching her. His grinned. He stood next to her, at the stern of the ship, watching the seagulls dance in the wake as they left port. Soon, they would be out too far for the gulls to fly. The smell of land would dissipate, and there would be nothing left but endless ocean all around them. "You were right," she answered. "This is bracing! Flying is not the same. Even though this trip cost so very, very much, it is absolutely worth it!" &nb...
Weekly Contest #243
My body felt like a thousand knives had cut me. My mind played images of laboratories, and approaching needles, test tubes, and eager whispers. I lay in a pool of light. The fixture above me swam into focus. I was on a platform, a small cushion beneath my head. I tried to get up, but pain and weakness overwhelmed me. A man entered the light and hovered over me. "Take it easy," he said, gently pressing my shoulder down. "You've been through a lot, but you're safe now." &nbs...
Weekly Contest #242
"If you've seen one Monet, you've seen them all." Madame X said to herself. She stood before the umpteenth "Water Lily" painting in the Monet exhibit, soon to close. Dressed in a long black dress, with auburn hair and pearl straps, she had had to spend eternity lifting one strap to her shoulder. Her artist, John Singer Sargent, was encouraged to paint out her fallen dress strap for a more conventional, if less appealing, strap placed firmly on her shoulder. She was stuck, always having to adjust...
Weekly Contest #241
I don't know what I was thinking, after breakfast with my friend. Although, to hear her tell of it, she was not so much. I met my neighbor Judy on the porch, and sat down in my chair. "How was your breakfast?" Judy asked. I told her my friend wanted to go to a place in New Hampshire for breakfast, and I was to drive. "Not good," I told her. "We were sitting down and had just ordered, and she looked me square in the face and told me we were not friends. I mean, who do...
Weekly Contest #240
I would be home soon, completing my dream sail around the world, following the trade winds, west to east. Before me, a black wall of cloud rolled towards me. I tried to steer into it, to ride it out, but the wind was too fast, a hot wall, full of ash and stinging particles. It blasted against the bow of the sailboat, turning it side on, and caught it into its vortex of power. The sailboat leaned away, the starboard rail dipping into the ocean waves stirred up in the wind. I crawled, hanging onto the railing, trying to clamp...
Weekly Contest #239
Upon the first evidence of the apocalypse, when scholars argued over toads vs. fur babies, and what did it all mean, many a Bible was thumbed and heads were scratched (fur and otherwise). The sudden drops (so to speak) and spatters (so to speak) of the first storm of domestic cats and dogs charmed the world. Until it was discovered how many fur babies can fall from the sky in a small village called Esperence, NY, just north of the Mohawk River, a town no bigger than a single block, with one signal light (flashing) and all t...
Weekly Contest #238
"All Rise!" called the bailiff. "The Fulton County court is now in session, Judge Jeffrey Cross now presiding." "Be seated. What have you got, District Attorney?" "Hit and run, your honor, with manslaughter." "Let me see." The bailiff took the papers from the District Attorney and brought them to the judge. He scanned the charges, and cocked an eyebrow. Before him, a small blue-haired lady leaned on her cane. She was dressed in a cheap dr...
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