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Weekly Contest #165
In the night, Lucia awakens and remembers how it used to be, those hot summer days in Tuscany when everyone at the villa stretched out for siesta. She gravitated to the boathouse, where she’d mosey into the murky shade with the sound of water slapping the hull. And soon there would be Guido, also seventeen, climbing out from the water, pushing back his dripping hair. “Come, slip into the water,” he’d say, trailing fingertips over the surface. “No, Ma worries when I swim alone.” “But you’ll be with me.” Shy smile. “Oh, a boy! That’s even wors...
Weekly Contest #164
Charlie checked his Rolex. An hour before his flight to Toronto and the connection home. He had one final pre-arranged stop. He drove the rental Camry down the street of stunted maples and shaggy bushes until it reached Perimeter Road, then went two blocks beyond. Here we are, the house that time forgot. The bungalow needed paint and the front yard was overgrown with thick-stemmed thistles. The blinds were half-drawn on the two front windows, like the lids of two watchful but tired eyes. In the city, Charlie knew this kind of dereliction: an...
I was waiting tables on a not-so-busy evening at the Old Mill restaurant the summer before my final year of actuarial science, a discipline all about probability and death. Although cycling to work was more dangerous, and Jenna argued I shouldn’t do it, I spent less time doing it, so in fact it was safer than riding a bus. Moreover, cycling took my mind off the new state of relationship limbo we had entered. A week earlier Jenna had been offered a scholarship abroad. Our summer fling was about to end—or enter a new phase, I wasn’t sure whic...
Weekly Contest #161
Nurse Alford noiselessly opened the door, just wide enough to poke her head around it. “Did you buzz?” she said to the woman who lay like a darkened splash on the slanted bed. “Yes,” said the woman, tapping the translucent IV line attached to her arm. “Please get me some more of whatever this is. I can’t bear how these afternoons drag on.” “Mrs. McKennitt,” the nurse said and sighed. “I would gladly ask the doctor to increase your medication, but you will need a better reason for it. An ‘afternoon dragging on’ is not reason enough, you know....
Weekly Contest #160
Everywhere the bodies were disappearing. Bodies of water, that is: the puddles, the sloughs, the ponds. Even the great river that ran among the lakes was growing smaller. On a tiny allotment, in a gentle valley, not far from a little village, the swimmer was crying. The air was so crisp each tear shrank to a grain of salt and was borne away on the breeze. She was crying because her beloved Lake Small was about to disappear. On fair weather days, she used to swim across the lake to the big rock and bask like a turtle in the sun’s kindly warm...
Weekly Contest #159
Charlie Bemis tugged at the celluloid collar around his neck as he waited for the judge to grant him a private audience. He peered out the tiny window at the people on the dusty street of the mining town outside. A man was arriving on horseback; two others were preparing to leave. Women in bonnets and long aprons carried woven baskets as they stepped carefully around horse-droppings. “Next!” said the clerk and soon Charlie was ushered into the judge’s chambers, sparsely decorated with a 44-star flag, a map of the Idaho Territory, and a pictu...
Weekly Contest #158
Long and Winding Road Excerpt from the diary of Daniel Bruback, 1978 Day 1 I promised Liz to keep track of the journey, not just the destination. She’s dead set against my plan, to skip one week of haying so I can show support for workers’ rights at the conference in the city. She’s always pulling rank on me. Fourteen months older but two grades ahead in school. Dad will have to show her how to drive the tractor while I’m gone. I hugged her and Lucky and then walked to Highway 11. I got a ride from Greenstone to Geraldton within ten minut...
Excerpt from the diary of Cordelia Brussels, lady-in-waiting to HRH Elizabeth IGreenwich Palace, 1593Dear Diary,The court was a-flutter with rumor of her majesty’s visitor today. I saw it in the heightened shine of their finery, the extra alertness in their eyes. Even my dear mousy friend Agatha wore a pretty shade of brown.The naval commander told me last week the visitor scheduled was “a pirate” who controls most of the western coast. “Surely you jest, Admiral,” said I.The fanfare played and she was announced: Grace O’Malley of Ireland. An...
Weekly Contest #155
When I heard Aunt Maisie’s warble on the voice-mail I groaned. Although she and Uncle Leland are no-fuss visitors, the type who’d welcome a cheese sandwich at my kitchen table, I suspected they had an agenda behind their impromptu visit in late spring. They’re good friends with Genevieve’s family. I wanted an excuse for a knock-down belly-busting barbecue. I was in the mood to coax a T-bone steak to perfection on my shiny new thousand-dollar deluxe grill enthroned on the deck that I had lovingly refurbished most of the past year while Genevi...
Weekly Contest #153
Crack! Crack! The blade of Branden Bannerman’s icebreaker chipped at the mound of ice in his backyard. The snow had been thick this year, smothering everything, including the flimsy carport roof. After every snowfall, he had shoveled off the roof, creating a gargantuan snowbank, which the kids called “our iceberg.” In the freeze-thaw cycle of early spring, it was far too icy for the kids to ride their toboggans on as they used to do, so now it sat there as hard and cold and immutable as misery. “What on earth are you doing?” Audrey shouted, ...
Weekly Contest #150
“Think about others? I am sick and tired of thinking about others!” Barb Ellacott posted to the main message board of her favorite chatroom, SundayPainters.com. In person, Barb was meek and mild with everyone in her seniors’ low-rise condominium, but she loved SundayPainters (motto: “For Artists 9 to 90”) and felt she could let her hair down in the chatroom, even if it were long tangly tresses instead of the practical grey bob she had worn for years. “Why are you sick and tired?” The reply from Habib, another member, floated in from cy...
Weekly Contest #149
The coal-fired power plant is closing, ready to turn off the lights forever in its industrial complex, and Petra shudders before the winds of change. She gamely attends the half-day retraining sessions, preparing to “deploy her skills in other sectors of the economy.” Late at night she seethes with the question Why me? but in daylight she obeys the poster plastered everywhere: Stay Calm and Carry On. She slows down as she rounds the curve of the highway, mindful of the bald tires that need replacing. An intermittent chirp reminds her that th...
Weekly Contest #148
The property agent cancels at the last minute. “But the key’s in a lockbox so you can still go in and have a look at this beauty,” she assures us in her breezy, overconfident way. With some key-jiggling, I unlock the door to the recently advertised “Your New View Awaits - Classy 1 BDRM Walk-up” I step inside, looping my finger around my purse strap, stretched as tight as it will go, and feel the purse’s weight bump against me, heavy as doubt. Dave barges into the middle of the biggest room, clacking his hard-soled boots, and cocks an eye a...
Weekly Contest #147
They sat in the flickering darkness, watching the final credits. For two hours, Mark Dirac had shared part of the universe with Blanche, breathing in her scent, listening more to her small creaturely noises than to the Japanese movie, After Life. Two hours of bliss. Oh sure, he had worried a little about his body, about not mouth-breathing and not tongue-smacking, and not being overcome by the occasional hardening that he had learned to disperse by thinking about solving first-order differential equations. But unlike other dates, he hadn’t w...
Weekly Contest #146
The memo goes out a month after I join EasyCo: everybody must attend the team-building exercises. I must remember to bring my opener. My group includes Jaden, also a new hire. He’s cute in a J.Crew unstained T-shirt kind of way. Six big sleek buses trundle us out to a rustic hideaway, a monster log cabin where we assemble in the frigid air conditioning. Perch on chair-sized wooden cubes, we watch the opening ceremonies. “It takes teamwork to make the dream work! People are our most important asset!” People are our most important resource! G...
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