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Weekly Contest #289
The room is unfamiliar, I don’t know how I got here. I am seated. I feel the chair against my butt. My back. I look at my feet. I lift one, then the other. They are inside big-toed, thick-soled black boots. When I lift one up, I see small puddles of dirty water under it. My hands lie on the table in front of me. The table is big enough for only one person: me. I can wiggle my fingers but it’s strange, my hands are inside puffy cloth bags. Like the puffy cloth thing I am wearing. “Settle down,” says a big man. He is about twi...
Weekly Contest #288
The plan was to leave campus early, before the snow set in, while light still filled the sky. But Aidan had fallen into a rabbit hole of online references and blogs and comments-on-blogs while researching his essay on indigenous land claims in northern Canada. Just an undergrad essay for an optional class, but it had suddenly become make-or-break, the piece he would regard forever more as the point when he committed, the point when he actually took up the cause to work for justice for his people. The library closing-time signal had chim...
Weekly Contest #284
It was the last day of Christmas holidays. There was so much to do to get the kids ready for tomorrow. Sierra planned to wake them up in an hour. They would be grouchy, but it was better to get on to the school-time schedule a day before they actually had to do it. She bit her lip, wishing she didn’t have to be the Grinch, wishing the fire emergency was over and that Pat could be home, safe and sound—and helping corral the kids. Fire season used to be April to October, so Pat normally had time off over winter. It had been a shock when the fi...
Weekly Contest #279
Faelyn dug the blade of her chisel into the wood, one chip at a time. Her brother, Sammy, sat on a crate beside her, snipping at a folded paper. In the bunker around them, the shelves were so laden with supplies they curved under the weight. Canned foods, hardware goods, and metal replacement parts jostled for space with tins of biscuits and sacks of beans. The contents of an average-sized house had been shaken out and crammed into a space one-tenth the size. Uggggh, she was sick of that room.Bits of wood and paper drifted onto the scuffed c...
Weekly Contest #275
“That’s it,” Joe yelled. “Final straw—I can’t connect!” He darted from kitchen table to rickety verandah, holding his laptop: the dance of the fading WiFi. “Hello, sweetheart,” Griselda crooned as she sidled up the path to their cottage. In the distance two ravens cawed and a motorboat hummed across the wide blue lake. A bucket swung on her arm; it held her beloved stinky newts and toads under bunches of noxious herbs. “Were you talking to me, dear?”Joe averted his eyes quickly—before she could mesmerize him. He forced himself to look only a...
Weekly Contest #273
Don’t tell anyone. I’m not supposed to be living here in the McKillop mansion. But when Mrs. Mildred McKillop invited me, an undocumented refugee, to stay in her home, what was I supposed to do? She caught me when I was at a low point, a few years ago, going door to door offering to rake and sweep leaves in the fall. “Ten bucks a pop,” I would say to whoever opened the door of each fine, gracious home in the ritziest enclave of Denver. They’d take one look at me, a sixteen-year-old kid with a bad haircut, wearing an outdated Denver Dynamite ...
Weekly Contest #269
MathieuShe is dead now, that Ms. Beasley who wielded the nastiest red pen this side of the Atlantic. I saw with my own eyes the drops of blood punctuating the white tile floor. I heard with my own ears the frantic call for help. I listened as the breathing became still, due to the poison of my dart.Generations of upper-year science students had to suffer the indignity of Beasley’s red pen as she reigned supreme in her laboratory. I was a student, a damn good one too. I had to take her lab class—I needed that course for my degree, and I had t...
Weekly Contest #268
Due to wildfires our house burned up, my husband got laid off, and my asthma began acting up with all the smoke and residue. The doctor said I needed to stay indoors, with an air filtration unit, at least until the baby is born—two months from now—and ideally for the next six months, until the baby’s lungs were robust. Mom lived in Stittsville, a two-hour drive away. Although Dad died twelve years ago, she’s still rattling around in the family house. “I’d love some company,” she said, “and the air here is clean.”Can skylark and night o...
Weekly Contest #267
At the corner of 8th Avenue and W 39th Street, David stands, blinking in the morning light, finally surfacing to air outside the tiled hallways of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the busiest bus terminal in the world. Slowly, dazedly, he paces to a street corner, shifting the shoulder strap of his overnighter. He’d slept jaggedly on the pleather seat of the Trailways overnight bus, and now is confused by this hectic city he’s been ejected into. He takes a deep breath. He touches his wallet in one pocket, his cellphone in the other. So far, ...
Weekly Contest #266
Jackie Yay, the perfect day for writing. Three friends agreed they would extend their usual two-hour write-together date into a daylong feast. “Labor Day—for our labors of love,” Jackie said, and she reserved the big meeting room at her office for the three of them. They would each bring their work-in-progress.Jackie’s husband was away on a weekend retreat; her time was truly her own. She set out on her bike an hour early, planning to get a head start. But her front tire had a slow leak so she had to stop twice to pump it.The second time she...
Weekly Contest #265
“I am on my way to pick up a horseshoe. My brother Dennis took it. It’s been outta my hands for a very long time,” says the man on the seat beside me. We’re on a Greyhound somewhere in West Virginia. I swirl my frosted vanilla cappuccino and take a long pull through the straw. Around us the other passengers are snoozing or gazing out the window. I’m glad I doctored my drink with a stiff shot of Grey Goose before I boarded. “A horseshoe, eh?” I say.My seatmate Braydon is a tough-looking guy, with close-cut hair that doesn’t quite disguise the...
Weekly Contest #264
Maggie settled down in the reserved pew, second from the front. Listening to the organ prelude, she smoothed and re-smoothed the skirt of her new dress. Dove gray or pearl gray, she couldn’t remember what she’d finally decided on. Keep it together, she reminded herself. Do not embarrass your daughter. This day was about Sasha and Devon—those two gung-ho, madly-in-love young folks. She adjusted the pin of her corsage, an ebullient display of lily, chrysanthemum, and baby’s breath.“Go ahead, turn around, have a look,” a familiar quiet voice wh...
Weekly Contest #263
Willa would never forget that day. She was coming home, carrying the new kill, with the fine jackrabbit fur tickling her nose, and the iron taste of blood still warm in her mouth. She planned to show the kill to her three cubs, Winken, Blinken, and Nod. She planned to use her razor-sharp teeth to tear the skin away, letting the blood sprinkle in their quivering little noses. She needed to wean the growing cubs off her milk and onto good, life-giving food. Fresh prey. Rabbits, mice, voles. She arrived at the rocks and bramble that concealed t...
Weekly Contest #262
During the hottest summer on record, I was in a terrible slump. I could find only part-time work, so I volunteered as much as possible. “Please,” I begged, “that batch of incoming mail for the city councilor simply must be processed.” I was appointed summer relief, in charge of sending personalized responses to the councilor’s snowbank of letters and cards, chiefly well-wishers, due to recent news of her lymphoma. I replied, rephrased, and, whenever possible, redirected the concern to different departments of the city. Yes, it was a mentally...
Weekly Contest #260
Change is in the air. Mr. Smith is back home, and he is singing his number one song, Amazing Grace. His warble falls flat in some places, and he mangles some words, but it’s recognizable by all. Mrs. Smith is sick of Amazing Grace. So sick of it. She hopes tonight they do not have the personal support worker named Grace, a plump young woman who wears too much jewelry, who is always snapping bracelets on and off. Although surely Grace is sick of that song by now, too. Isn’t she? Sometimes Mr. Smith sings Amazing Race instead. The first time h...
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