Young Writers discussion

This is going to be like the hall-of-fame, the place where the contest stories that won and therefore didn't suck go to stand as superiors. I hate to break it to you, but chances are, you aren't a superior....yet. GET IT TOGETHER AND WIN, FOOL.

WEEK ONE (APRIL 4) WINNER: BAXTER
PROMPT: Shadows In Heaven

On January 23, 1978, George Buendia McConnell was born in a small hospital near the Colorado-Nebraska boarder. Every member of the family was present for the joyous occasion. His mother, who was the local physician, cried for days afterward out of pure happiness. She had always wanted a little boy.

On December 19, 2009, George Buendia McConnell died alone in his apartment room. A noose was found around his swinging body, and a television flickered in the corner with the frozen image of two naked men staring at each other. It was ruled an accident.

It was then that George Buendia McConnell awoke. He was hanging in the air, but from what he did not know. Moving his arms up, he found rope tied around his neck. Looking around, he realized it was his own room, and a chair lay knocked over beside him. With a great deal of effort, he managed to pull the chair back up with his feet at get an even footing. After successfully undoing the knot of the rope he got down and began heading out the door. The television buzzed softly as a static image light up the room.

He walked out of his room and started up the stairs, with the intentions of getting on the roof. Along the way, he noticed something odd about his shadow. It reminded him somewhat of an image of space he saw as a child. In the picture, purple and black mixed together wildly, as multi-coloured swirls and specks of light held the eyes attention. But the shadow was also shaped differently. George could not place his finger on it, but it seemed foreign to him.

The elevator opened noiselessly at the roof, and George found himself blinded by a violent light. The sun could not be seen, but it was still the brightest he had even seen. Every inch of the building was a pristine white, and a human stood in the center of the roof.

As George approached the human, he noticed is changing. It was a man when he stepped onto the roof, but a woman as he started walking forward. Looking up at the dark skinned man whose hair was receding, George asked,

“I want back.”

The girl with large eyes and only one arm gazed down and him and smiled. She told him, “We all want back.”

“But can it be done?”

“Yes,” said the little child, “you just have to catch it.”

The stranger below George, whose body was the universe, began moving past the old wrinkled woman. One foot after another, George stepped carefully, trying to catch the space that he couldn’t reach until he was at the edge of the building. The street was white, white like the sky, the apartment, the person. He walked off and fell through the windless sky.

The shadow remained out of reach.

WEEK TWO (APRIL 11) WINNER: AMY
PROMPT: Gateway to Nowhere

Look.

An old lady is crossing the street. She is proud that she can do so without help.

This road is important to her. To her left is the park in which her husband proposed, where her children played years ago. Half a block to the right is the hospital where both their children were born, and where her husband drowned in a sea of flashing lights.

She is on her way to the post office to mail a letter to her grandson in Iraq. If she is lucky, there will be a note from him sitting in her PO Box.

Look.

A man is walking a few steps behind her. He doesn’t know that he sold her a scoop of Baskin Robbins ice cream twenty years ago, or that he spoke to her once during his years as a telemarketer. He doesn’t know that they buy their shoes at the same place or that her husband once worked in the office building that he is hurrying towards.

His only thought in regards to this woman is frustration—she is walking right down the middle of the sidewalk at a snail’s pace. He has a job interview in fifteen minutes.

Look.

Behind him is a man—boy—no older than twenty-three. This street means nothing to him. He has never been here before, nor will he ever return. He is visiting the area, staying with his Aunt for a few days. Next month, he is leaving to join the same war that the old woman’s grandson is fighting in. He doesn’t know that his Uncle once held the library door open for the old woman. He doesn’t know that both he and the man ahead grew up in the same city, or that the McCain supporter that gave him the finger as he walked down the street in his Obama tee-shirt was the man’s second cousin.

Look.

They do not know each other’s names. They do not know where the others are going, nor do they care. If they began a conversation, it would be like opening a gate. Of memories, thoughts, lives. They might get along, they might be bitter enemies. Yet they probably wouldn’t uncover the random links, hidden under the surface. Buried under opinions, memories and emotions.

But they do not stop. They do not speak. They continue about their business, not thinking of each other.

And the gate leads to nowhere.

WEEK THREE (APRIL 18) WINNER: DAYNA
PROMPT: Persnickety Rapscallions

It was a bright and warm day on the Burbenhieger Farm. Mr. Burbenhieger was out planting fresh seeds, while his children were running around in the immense fields.

“Don’t you step on my here plants you little chil’ren!” said the Farmer in a thick southern accent.

“We won’t Daddy!” They all responded in unison.

The farmer continued planting his seeds while the children continued running around together. However, one little boy, about the age of 7 stopped running abruptly.

It was soon after the farmer had bent over to plant yet another seed.

“Daddy?” the little boy gently whispered. He nudged his father’s arm softly.
“What is it Tom!? I have work to do!” The farmer snapped at the boy.

“Daddy. My name is Tim. “

“Ah, shut up Tod. I have too many chil’ren to keep track of. Now you expect me to ‘member names too? I don’t think so!” The farmer yelled.

“Daddy”, Tim whimpered, “I just wanted to tell you that the row of seeds you are planting isn’t … well… it isn’t- “

“SPIT IT OUT SON!” The farmer screamed.

“Well, it isn’t straight.” Tim whispered.

“YOU CAN LEAVE NOW!” The farmer shouted. He was clearly annoyed at the audacity of the boy.

“Darn persnickety rapscallion.” Farmer Burbenhieger muttered under his breath.

WEEK FOUR (APRIL 25) WINNER: BAXTER
PROMPT: Think Outside the Box

He could see a box.

The box sat on a table. It was relatively large, big enough to fit a small television inside. The outside was beaten with wrinkles and dents covering all sides. The edges were all dulled from being hit. Poorly folded at the top, and taped together even poorer, it looked like a box that’s glory days had past. On the top side, in the upper right hand side, was an address written hastily in blue pen.

George Buendia McConnell
New York, New York
320 Barkley Street

The table was bare except for the box. On the floor, countless objects laid, clearly pushed off to give room to the worn out cube. A book on existentialism, a broken syringe, used tissues bunched into small balls, a butter knife. Excluding this single area, the apartment room was almost completely empty. There were no televisions, no computers, no furniture. It had the appearance of a room which had not been used for several years. Only one light was on in the room, one which hung lazily over the table, bathing the box in a dim green light. It would periodically flicker, though never shut completely off.

George Buendia McConnell was sitting in a chair which was almost in as pathetic condition as the box. The brown finish had long left its once beautiful body, and the wood had begun to tear and fall apart. McConnell rested with respect on the chair, his elbows on top of his knees, his feet standing up at the toes. His dark brown eyes stared intently at the box.

There was no reason for it to be there. He had not asked for the box, not wished for it. Yet there it sat on his table, with his name sloppily written on it. For six months he had stayed away from all human contact. Relying on his dying parents for money, calling in food, refusing to leave his apartment. There was nothing for the box to hold, because he had never asked for anything. Yet there it sat on his table.

He hesitated, an arm reached up and scratched his speckled chin, and with great caution, he touched the box. Dropping to the floor, he began to search furiously for a pair of scissors through the rubble. Settling for the butter knife, he stood up and leaned over the box. He stabbed through the tape. Cutting down a straight line in between the folds, the top of the box gave into his attack, and bounced up. With a deep breath, McConnell opened the flaps and looked inside.

He could see a box.

WEEK FIVE (MAY 2) WINNER: CATHERINE
PROMPT: Midnight Melody

Six o'clock.

Beautiful music permeated the theater. Notes bounced off of every corner, filling the minds of the audience with sweet harmonies. The contentment was tangible; she could have reached out and physically grasped the pure joy of just being there, listening to her pour her heart out into what she loved best. But she didnt, of course, because her hands were busy at the keys.

What could she say? She had gotten lucky. The weather was perfect, the mood was high, and economic times were in an upswing, which explained the sold-out showing of the expensive concert.

And of course, the reason for the high expense in the first place, the performance of the most popular new pianist of the decade.

It was an absolute honor to be chosen out of many to open for him, and Christina had idolized him from the beginning.

Finally, after exhausting her repertoire, she finished with her favorite, Chopin's 'Raindrop' Prelude. She took her bows, and thanked the respectively clapping audience as the main attraction made his way to the bench. The people got to their feet in his honor, a standing ovation before he even began.

Nine o'clock.

Amateurish, at best...mediocre...why would they allow...someone like that...open for someone like him...someone like that...

These were the words that pounded through Christina's head as she drowned her sorrows in drink after drink at the bar.

She had left the rest of the concert obviously in awe of her successor, yet still confident in her own performance. Lingering in the lobby for just a moment to find her keys, Christina couldn't help but overhear a respectable looking group of women to her right, gossiping.

She could have cared less, until she realized it concerned her.

Amateurish, at best...mediocre...why would they allow...someone like that... for someone like him...someone like that...

They were nobodies, most likely knowing nothing about music, but the words still cut her like a knife. She only cared to hear those select few comments before dashing out to her car, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

And all the while, the final notes of her favorite piece echoed throughout her head. A haunting reminder of her apparent failure.

Twelve o'clock.

It was dark and raining as drops slid down the windshield in endless streaks, clouding Christina's already impaired vision. She had no idea how fast she was going, or if she happened to be running a stop sign or not. She was just driving, trying in vain to escape from the terrors of her own throbbing mind.

There was a big, bright red light up ahead. Her repressed logical mind tried to reach her, to tell her what she was doing was wrong, but the melody of the prelude was deafening in her ears, suppressing any other thoughts.

She scrunched her eyes shut tight against the noise, and kept constant pressure on the pedal under her foot, not noticing how far up the road she was until it was too late.


Broken.


Everything was broken. Rain beat down on the battered car, laying on its side. Glass had shattered everywhere, and Christina could feel it cutting into her body all over. She was too exhausted to even care.

Slowly, the music in her brain faded, until on the inside, there was finally peace. It was replaced on the outside only by the steady sound of the raindrops pounding rhythmically against her broken body; the saddest melody ever heard.

WEEK SIX (MAY 16) WINNER: ALESEA
PROMPT: Backwards

I was told that when I'd die, I'd see my entire life flash before my eyes. I was told that I would see myself as a baby, even if I don't remember it, then as a toddler, preteen, teenager, adult... I thought that it was just the type of thing that parents tell their children to make them think that your last moments would be magical.

Over time, I matured, I grew up. I realized that life wasn't a fairytale. It never was. I was just blinded and brainwashed by everyone I knew. The world used to be perfect.

Soon enough, I didn't believe them. I bet a lot of you don't believe that. How was it possible to see your life literally flash before your eyes? It isn't possible. It's just a story, right?

I learned that I was wrong.

I am dead. I saw my life flash before my eyes. I went backwards in time to see all those things that I did and all those things I wish I could have done.

But that's all in the past now, right? It doesn't matter now, does it? I've moved on, forever, and I never have to look back at that ever again.

Wrong again. I'll never be able to forget all of those choices that I made. Whether they were good or bad at the time, I don't know. All that I know was that most of those lead to my death.

I died in a plane crash. Plane #01281295 on Alpha Airlines across the U.S. from Seattle to New York City I was going there for the fifth time in my life. I hadn't been to New York since two years before, and I was extremely eager to get there again. I was going there for my debut piano concerto at Carnegie Hall.

I was basically a piano prodigy when I was younger. Seriously, I was one of those pianists that played with a pristine youth orchestra at the age of nine. Every choice I made that had to do with piano lead up to my death. Asking Dad if I could have his old keyboard, telling Mom that I was interested in piano, asking for lessons, joining youth and school orchestras, attending recitals, entering contests... All this lead up to that one day.

My death day.

All of that flashed before my eyes as the plane went down. My life ran backwards and I was propelled into the unknown. When the plane finally crashed, and the alarms and the screams of men, women, and children were suddenly silenced, it all stopped. For one unbelievable moment, all was quieted as if all had lost its voices.

And I awoke outside the plane, staring at the rising flames.

A body lay motionless on the other side of the plane. I took a closer look and saw myself sitting in that very same seat. My invisible heart sank when I saw my final expression frozen across my face.

That moment haunts me. It devastates my soul, steals all sanity I have left. I want to forget this memory with all the life that I have to hold, to burn it in the flames that burned me.

But I can't. I can't make time go backwards.

WEEK SEVEN (JUNE 24) WINNER: USHA
PROMPT: A Library

Lenny Harris Jr. had a strange ambition. Every since he had learned to read, he dreamed of growing up to be a library. His parents thought it was adorable, his siblings found it as something to laugh about, and all of his other relatives looked forward to the time when he grew out of this odd obsession and they could enjoy teasing him about it for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately for his relatives, that day never came.
All through grade-school, Lenny was the butt of many a joke. He always had his nose in a book and he was mocked viciously by other children. They called him names, such as “Library Harry” and often hid his beloved novels in places that they thought he would never find. But the books he read made him clever and he easily figured out where they were.

His parents began to worry for their son’s sanity. Lenny hated how they tried to make him choose “a real job”, as they put it. Eventually, he never discussed his dreams with them again.

Middle school and high school flew by. Lenny still endured mockery and bullying. But the insults this time were less clever and sometimes they didn’t make much sense. He took the Career aptitude Test and it told him that he should be a librarian. Believe it or not, that would be the closest thing to encouragement that Lenny would ever receive.

Since Lenny didn’t need a college degree to become a library, he immediately began reading as if the world would end. Years of practice made him a fast and comprehensive reader. He could finish a two hundred-fifty-seven page novel in half an hour and be able to tell you about the story’s plot in detail.

The years wore on. Lenny’s parents were so upset with his decision that they disowned him and wrote him out of the will. Lenny was forced to sell all of the books that he had collected over the years. It didn’t bother him though, because he had already read them all,

Pretty soon this had become a routine. There were lists of titles on many sheets of paper on one side of his desk that were labeled BUY. On the floor to the right of his desk was a large pile of books that was labeled SELL.

That was how it was for the beginning of Lenny’s adult life. Buying, reading, selling, buying, reading, selling….Until he turned Sixty-five years old.

Sitting at his desk, Lenny was on the last page of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. As he read the last word on the last page, he felt something stir within his core. Suddenly, part of his mind realized that he had read every book ever printed in English and that his life’s goal had been achieved.

Lenny Harris Jr. was born as s boy and died as a library.

WEEK EIGHT (JULY 1) WINNER: MAE MARIE
PROMPT: Fractured Clocks

My name is Theodore.
Blood type B, right-handed. I’ve never owned a bike.

When I was twelve, I witnessed a murder.

It was right outside our apartment in the middle of the night. My parents were sleeping, but I was staring out the window. A guy was walking by our house, just a casual passer-by, when someone came running up the street and stabbed him, right there. He didn’t take his wallet or anything, just left him there to die and ran away.

It happened very fast, and I couldn’t process what I’d just seen for a second. I wasn’t a particularly brave kid, but something made me dash down our stairs, run out the door, and approach the dying guy.

At the time I thought he was old, but he must have only been in his fifties. His hair was starting to gray and he kinda stank like he hadn’t taken a bath in a while. His clothes were ratty too, so he might have been homeless or something.

He was laying face-up on the ground, and he might have been dead already, except when he heard me coming he lifted his head and smiled at me. At any other time, I might have thought Dude, you’re dying. Why are you smiling at me? But just then, something else about him had caught my attention.

His heart was hammering madly. I could hear it, even from here.
Thump-thump, thump-thump.
He had a heart. A heart of flesh and blood.

Reader, when I was twelve. I met my first human.

He had an organ for a heart, not a clock. He didn’t tick, he thumped. He would live to be eighty, not two hundred- not even that anymore. He hadn’t been wound up with a golden key when he was a baby. He wouldn’t have a scar on his back where the key-hole had closed over. My heart wasn’t fleshy, weak. It was a clock. It ticked, like everyone else’s. But this man, this dying man, was one of the last of his kind. Human.

Tick tick tick tick
Tick tick tick tick
Tick tick tick tick
SNAP.

WEEK NINE (JULY 8) WINNER: SYLVER SKYE
PROMPT: Dandelion Gum

I remember.
Strolling down the roads of my youth, I peered into shop windows, memories stirring from the corners of my brain.
Flo's Drive In, where I'd had my first kiss.
Dr, Jacob's Office, where my mother had been diagnosed with a tumor.
French and Rising's Funeral Home, they had buried her.
Pet-O-Rama, where I'd gotten Crunch McFlufnaut, my dog.
Memorial Field, I'd won the little league series there.
Foode Mart, my first job
I sighed, listening to click of my shoes on the pavement. Why was I even here? All these shops were closed and boarded up now, interiors coated with a thick layer of dust. The streets were cracked, almost beyond use for motor cars.
I stopped suddenly, my eye caught by one of the stores. The battered and weathered sign read Dan's Sweets. Smirking to myself, I walked over to one of the greasy windows and peered in. I head spent many days in here, pockets full of that weeks allowance. An allowance soon to be blown on truffles, jaw breakers, licorice, cherry cordials and most importantly, gum.
When I was younger I lived for gum. Any flavor, strawberry, lemon, raspberry, even peach and banana. But what I loved most of all was the dandelion flavor. Originally introduced a “wacky” flavor for Halloween, its popularity grew within our town. Dan’s Sweets was alive and thriving and everyday you could watch shipments of dandelion gum being delivered.
Later, Dan and his workers found the recipe for it and soon they were making it themselves. It was better than ever and became our chief export. But that was our mistake. So blinded were we by our love of the gum, we didn’t realize that the rest of the world thought it was repulsive and vulgar. The town folded in on itself as the economy went bad and more and more shops were closing.
I glanced around, a sort of melancholy descending upon me. And that was how Dandelion Town, U.S.A, ended up like this. A bleak shell of its former self. A sudden thought struck me. I needed to get in there. I needed to see if there was any more dandelion gum left in the world. I would regret it my whole life if I didn’t.
I looked at the wooden boards appraisngly. They were flimsy and came off easily. Coughing, I stepped through the passageway I had made and looked around.
It was exactly as I remembered, albeit dustier. Most of the candy was gone, aside from the Rat Tail Brand licorice. No one had ever liked it except for Dan's disabled son. My heart sank. Where was the dandelion gum?
I scanned the room anxiously, my gaze suddenly falling upon an unopened crate. I grinned suddenly. There it was!
I rushed to it and pried it open. Stacked very neatly in rows was dandelion gum. I picked a strip up and peeled it slowly with expertise borne of many years. I popped it in my mouth and chewed in slowly. It was the most wonderful thing I had ever tasted.
If anyone had happened to look in at that particular moment, they would have seen a man in a business suit sitting on the floor with tears streaming down his face and the expression of the happiest man in the world upon his face.

WEEK TEN (JULY 15) WINNER: LESLIE NOEL (LAVENDARLOL)
PROMPT: The Dreamhouse

Lindsey sat alone amidst hand tailored pillows shaped like frilly hearts, clothed with pink and red silks, staring at the expensively wallpapered sides of the spacious room. Drops of water landed on her soft small hands, blurring her view of her perfect bedroom. Pictures of her and Zac were resting on one wall in a collage of smiles, color, and love. The emerald color of her eyes hadn’t yet dulled in those pictures; her auburn hair still had some bounce. Zac still looked just the same as he always had, as far as Lindsey could tell. The same freezing blue eyes, the same white blonde hair. The same crooked smile and pointed nose. She laid back onto her Temper-Pedic mattress and let out a deep sigh. She’d be sleeping alone tonight, as she had been for the past two years. She let her mind wander, trying to recall memories of the happy days, the good days, the days before she felt so lonely and empty inside.

“Lindsey,” Zac said, his hands trembling. “I love you.”


“I know,” Lindsey replied with a carefree smile. “I didn’t need you to tell me that. I could tell all along.”


Zac looked flustered, but he smiled and continued. “I hope you’ll accept my offer and…” he trailed off.


“Marry you?” Lindsey’s eyes twinkled.


Zac just nodded, so Lindsey leaned in to kiss him.


“Of course I’ll marry you,” she said just before their lips touched.


She knew she wasn’t going to be able to get to sleep. She never could, not without Zac next to her, holding her. She bit her lip just hard enough that it hurt, but didn’t draw blood, and rolled out of bed and crept out of her bedroom. She walked slowly down the hall, looking at the endless rows of doors. In the center of the house a spiral staircase crept up through the 10 stories of beautiful architecture. Zac had built it all himself.


“I built this, just for you and me. So we can be together in happiness. Forever,” Zac gently caressed Lindsey’s cheek.


“It’s beautiful!” Lindsey exclaimed, leaning back into Zac’s waiting arms. “How long did it take you to make this?


“About ten years,” Zac shrugged as if it was no big deal. “I was just waiting for the right person to share it with.”


“And you picked me,” Lindsey sighed happily.


The first year of living in Zac’s dream house had been amazing, perfect, wonderful. It had everything she could ever want. A gigantic kitchen, a movie theater size TV room, a closet full of beautiful clothes. And Zac with her almost every night. But things changed. Lindsey had gotten curious, and wondered what all the closed doors were for. Zac gave her free reign of the house, except for the doors that were closed. No matter how much she begged and pleaded, he would never tell her, only give her a sharp command to “stay away.”


One night, a night when Zac was working too hard to come to bed, Lindsey couldn’t sleep, so she crawled out of bed and stared at the rows of doors she had seen so many times, but never dared to open. She looked at the doors for a few minutes, before sudden bravery came over her. She opened one of the doors quickly before she could back out. Zac was sitting in bed next to a gorgeous girl with dark skin and dark hair, whispering to her as she giggled in response. Lindsey closed the door quickly and ran back to her room in tears.


She had never told Zac of her discovery, but as she wandered through the halls she wondered which room he was in tonight.

WEEK ELEVEN (JULY 23) WINNER: KRISS
PROMPT: Dancing Robots

Still recalled in his mind was a tender, soft touch; one that had warmed the metal and circuits of his being into life. But that was gone, and in its place was rust. He wasn’t alive anymore. The joints of his metallic body no longer dared to function—each movement earned a scream of protest. No longer was the robot capable of moving, of functioning. However, he was still conscious. Still aware. The “off button” had never been pressed, his cable stuck into the wall’s outlet was never removed.

And so he was still aware. Still fully conscious of how with each passing day it got worse and worse. The darkness became darker, yet fear was not an option. He did not fear anything, nor was he capable. The robot did not feel. Only was he able to calculate, and at the moment his calculations were directed towards his own demise. A slow demise in which he was watching ever moment of it. The eons would pass, and perhaps his battery would finally give out. But his creator was not an idiot.

The robot’s battery would last for a long time, even after the power of the house flickered out one last time.

He would be able to assess the damage. He would be able to slowly count away the time it took for his limbs to fall apart and for his mechanical heart to stop beating. Oh yes, and it wouldn’t be painful. The robot could not feel even pain. His brain functioned with such intelligence he was unable to process neither sensation nor emotions.


His creator had left out that part, and now he almost wished he was able to feel. At least then there would be misery. But this… this was nothing. He was a flower in the garden of death, wilting away with resistance –but wilting away nonetheless. However, to the robot’s dismay, even the silence of this room did not last. As the rain through the holes of the roof pattered down upon his shoulders and head, the robot inclined his rusted neck in the slightest.

Light streamed into the house, slowly at first and then with more power. There was jostling and noise and voices. Someone had busted into his creator’s house, and slowly, very slowly, the nameless robot saw them approach with their flaring lights.

“Here it is! I told you it was here!”

The robot’s creator never referred to his creation as an “it”.

“Look at the brute!”

And so the two men take the rusted robot, and they were selfish men. In a time long prior, before the robot’s human master wilted into death of age, he was respected. But no longer could the human population recall the genius of the man who lived in the metal house at the end of the dirt road.

In the end the rusted robot watched morosely as humans tied ropes to his arms and legs and heads. And they made him dance on a stage with these ropes, pulling at his rusted arms and legs until the rust fell away. And to the marionette show, there was a sign outside the theater. It read:

“NEW AGE MARIONETTE DOLL

FEATURING THE DANCING ROBOTS”

WEEK TWELVE (JULY 30) WINNER: EMILY
PROMPT: A finger, pointed towards heaven

As the dark clouds drifted away from the pale orange moon, I panicked. I fleetingly ran from the woods, twigs and plants ripping at my clothes.

But they still pursued me. “Where are you going?” the tall one asked, a faint grin tugging at his lips under his menacing eyes.

Then I remembered.


I stepped into the dimly lit room, a somber feeling hung in the air.

There lie the old man, gazing up at the ceiling with unusual interest. He didn’t notice me at first, but when he did, he glanced at me slowly with the same interest as the ceiling. But he didn’t speak because of the oxygen mask plastered on his face.

I was gently pushed towards him; I stumbled as I glanced back at my parents. They nodded grimly.

I turned towards the old man again, as I shuffled towards him. I stared at him when I was by his bedside and whispered, “Where are you going?”

He stared bleakly at me for a moment, then slowly raised a bony finger up, and I understood. I smiled sadly as he put his upward-pointing finger down. But his eyes still remained to gaze up, as if he could see beyond the building. Then he closed his eyes and exhaled for one last time.


I stared blankly at the man that stood before me. It was him. His fault. “Where are you going?” he had asked. I pointed a shaky finger up towards the sky.

His smile faded as fear clouded his amber eyes when the past flooded back.

WEEK THIRTEEN (AUGUST 8) WINNER: DEATH BY FIRE
PROMPT: A newspaper

Newspapers have always driven me crazy. I’ve never like them. They broadcast nothing but bad news and petty gossip. Please explain to me how they are useful.

Of course, if you live after the apocalypse, you tend to rethink some things.
****
“Narla, give me back the business pages! You’re not even old enough to have a job!” Jasper grabbed for the dirty newspaper, knocking into Nicholas.

“Whatch it, Jasper!” Nicholas snapped, pulling his legs close to his chest. “You may be old enough to have a job legally, but plenty of twelve year olds have jobs. Maybe she’ll find work.”

Jasper sat back in a huff, glaring at the ground. “I don’t understand how there’s still a government system when the whole world is in ruins. You’d think Al Gore or some eco-geek would survive instead of a power hungry jerk.”

“You know President Stevens barely survived. I don’t see why you hate him so much.” Narla said, tossing the newspaper to her brother.

“He’s an idiot! He’s keeping the newspaper business open when scavengers can barely get by! He’d be better off keeping Laundromats open!”

“He says newspapers are the only way to keep the country together. It’s not a bad way to keep everyone informed, seeing as no one has a tv anymore.”

Nicholas sighed and picked up a piece of charcoal from the dead fire, starting to draw on the back of the front page.

It had been two years since the apocalypse, and hardly anything had gotten better. People were dying in large numbers every day and plenty more were getting sick. It seemed as if the animals had completely disappeared, along with the plants. Nicholas missed the sound of the birds in the morning…

But despite everything that was gone, President Stevens had insisted the newspapers stay in print. Nicholas had found it odd at first, but it did make sense. After all, how else would the U.S. stay informed? All technology had been, for the most part, wiped out during the last days. Nothing was left except for a few cracked televisions.

Narla’s gasp brought Nicholas out of his thoughts and he looked at his younger sister.

“What is it, Narla?” Jasper asked, moving to sit next to her. Nicholas also crawled over next to her and looked over her shoulder. He blinked in surprise at the headline sitting angrily on the page.

“President Stevens Assassinated During Diplomatic Exchange. Newspapers Going Out of Print, VP Donalds says.” popped out of the page, making Nicholas grimace.

“Well, I guess Stevens’ final decision has run out of ink.” Jasper said.

WEEK FOURTEEN WINNER: CARA
PROMPT: A road

We must have walked this road a thousand times. It hasn’t changed over the years that we’ve known each other, although I can’t say the same for us. The dust still kicks up from underneath our shoes. The stones still make a crunch, crunch underneath our shoes as we walk. The corn fields still roll back and forth in the wind, changing from yellow to green to yellow again. The sky is still above us, an endless blanket of clear blue.

But as you walk beside me, I can’t help but feel, no, I know that things are not the same between you and me. On the outside you’re still the same. Your green eyes still sparkle like gems. Your brown hair is still uncombed, and probably hasn’t been since we last saw each other. Your dimples still show when you smile.

But your smile. Oh, god, your smile. Your smile used to make my heart melt on the spot, even if I wasn’t the one receiving it. Now, it just makes my heart ache. It aches for a time when you would come to my house just to surprise me. It aches for a time when we knew every nook and cranny of this old town. It aches for a time when we would walk this seldom traveled dirt road together. It aches for when we would get lost here and not care how to get back.

Now, we walk in silence, because we don't want to talk about what lies ahead. Not even the birds make a sound. We walk this road together and we remember what we once were. You have your hands in your pocket and you look at your feet as you walk. Once upon a time, I would have grabbed your hand out of your pocket, and we would swing our hands back and forth and smile like we never knew such joy. My hand stays in my pocket and yours stays in yours. But the entire time I look at you and I silently beg for you to look back at me, to look at me like you did when we were teenagers.

This road isn’t like the sky. It doesn’t go on forever, and now we’ve reached the end. Your hand grabs mine, and for a moment I believe that things can change. I believe that our love never truly died. I believe that you still meant those words you said when we were six, that you would marry me one day. I believe that when you look at me you still see the most beautiful girl in the world. For a second, I believe that I can forget everything we did wrong.

Your eyes lock with mine, and my fantasies fade. Your eyes are dull, and tears flow freely from them.

I hang my head down and let out a sob. It’s too much to see you like this. We shouldn’t be the ones making each other cry. It’s just not right. Your head hangs down on top of mine. I take both your hands, and we stand like this for a while, letting our tears drip one by one to the dirt.

You let go of my hands and take a step back. I look up at your face and try not to cry harder. Your attempted smile is making me heart melt and break at the same time.

One last time, you take my hands and kiss my forehead. I close my eyes as you whisper, “I’m glad it was you.”

I barely utter our old joke, “My favorite accident.”

You shake your head. “No, we were perfect. The world just got in the way.”

Our hands drift apart, and I slowly back away. You start to fade, and it’s beautiful and horrible at the same time. You’re transparent and the sun is shining through your body, but you’re smiling. Not your normal smile of course. It’s a bitter sweet smile, like you’re finally content with your fate. With our fate.

Your lower body fades completely, and the last glimpse of you I get to see is your smile, your old beautiful smile that makes my heart melt. You’re gone before I can blink, but I think of your smile and think that you were saying everything is alright now.

I turn around and walk this road alone. I walk this road and hope that it’s as endless as the sky, because every step I take makes me think of you.

WEEK FIFTEEN WINNER: SILVER
PROMPT: A key

"I love you."

They were empty words, hollow words and they dropped from his mouth like poison.

I stared out the window of his car listlessly as the landscape flashed before me. There was silence. I did not return his gesture.

To fill the void, I turned on the radio. The bitter-sweet notes of a catchy tune filled the car.

"She sold her love to a modern man . . ."

I could see him looking at her out of the corner of his eye. My hand reached to turn up the volume.

". . .she's our star tonight. Without warning she gave up the ghost inside. . ."

He gripped the steering wheel tighter.

"Too late to leave him are the songs in her car . . ."

"You don't love me," I whispered.

His knuckles whitened and I could see him opening his mouth, ready to spill another pack of lies.

Then he stopped. He pulled over and I saw we were in the parking lot of my apartment complex.

"You're right. I don't. I never loved you," it came out fast, an almost senseless jumble of words.

I stared at him, felt the blood drain from my face.

Hadn't I known it all along? But the words hit me like individual sledge hammers.

I tried to tell him I didn't love him either, that we should end this right now. But the words would not come.

I stepped out of the car. He turned to me, a certain look in those blue eyes I could not place.

Then, without warning, he turned the car around and drove out of the parking lot and into the road.

He drove out of our relationship.

Out of our love.

Out of our friendship.

As I watched him go, I felt tears welling in my eyes.
And I knew one thing for certain, something I could never be rid of.

That man held the key to my heart.

WEEK SIXTEEN WINNER: EMILY
PROMPT: A paper cut

I slink through the alley, keeping my hat low over my eyes so no one could notice me. I was 100%, absolutely sure that I looked like a shady, drug-dealing type person, but that doesn't matter at the moment. What matters is now.

I spot him by a garabage can with a strange green goo overflowing out of it, flies buzzing interestly around it. He's in the same getup as me. He cocks his head and takes a few steps towards me. He stops, and I take a few steps towards him.

He reaches his hand into his coat. "This?" he asks in a gruff voice, twirling a vanilla envelope in his hand. I nod.

He reaches out his hand, and I hurry to grab it. As it slips past my fingers, I yank my hand back with a sharp pain. A bright, red papercut is on my left hand.

He smirks darkly to himself as he lifts his head a little. Startling green eyes peer over his sunglasses. I gasp as the world starts spinning, and I clutch my chest. The papercut had that new, toxic killing spray, I realize.

I coughed and gagged as a burning sensation is shot up and down my throat, and I fall on the ground on my hands and knees.

He walks over and kicks my side. He gave a crule smile. "From the opposing agency," he says formally, reaching into his coat again. He pulls out a long, smooth daggar.

"No!" I gasp. But he lunges his hand down, hitting my stomach. I sputter and gasp as my trench coat is soaked with a warm, red liquid. The world is spinning faster. My stomach burns.

But I remember something. The cramps, the nausea, my protruding belly, the due date--

"It's yours!" I cry. "The baby is yours!"

The smile wipes off his face as I take a shuddering last breath.

WEEK SEVENTEEN WINNER: EMILY
PROMPT: Crying cats

The world spun as I took breathless gasps. The effect of the drugs blur reality from fantasy. I stumbled backwards and fell into the pile of garbage there.

I close my eyes, trembling. My momma told me never to get involved with drugs, but I was desperate. Surely that was an exception.

No, it isn't.

I shook that thought out of my head. One little sniff every once in a while didn't hurt, right?

Once in a while? You do it every night.

Did I really do this every night? I couldn't remember anything.

You pass out, rescued by Dave.

Dave really rescued me? Didn't Dave leave me after I got involved with drugs?

He never stopped loving you.

Even after the abortion?

Yes.

I blinked back the tears as I seemed to go spiraling through a vortex hell. The moon seemed to fall into the dump, the shack I was facing seemed to become warbled. I inhaled once more.

I groaned.

You better stop.

No.

You want to.

No!

You NEED to.

"NO!"

I jumped up, but quickly fell over again.

A picture of my mother suddenly popped into my head, her warnings about drugs echoing through my head.

As I sniffed once more before the world turned black, I swore I saw cats crying for my terrible fate.

WEEK EIGHTEEN WINNER: YUE
PROMPT: A rose

In a cemetery of a small town, there lay a single wilted rose, forgotten. If this rose could speak, it would tell you a story of a boy and a girl...

She was beautiful. He was average. She was tall. He was short. She was beautiful. He was smart. She walked with the populars. He hung with the nerd herd.

But despite their differences, they shared one thing in common: they loved each other, though neither one of them knew.

On the night of the homecoming, he decided to confess his love. He bought a single rose and worked up his courage to go talk to her.

She was talking with her friends, having fun, when she noticed him walking towards her with a rose.

With his face beet red, he handed her the rose fessed up, telling her how much he'd loved her.

Every part of her ached to tell him yes, but she could feel her friends' eyes, boring into her. She knew they wouldn't approve. He was a nobody. He was a loser.

She knew if she'd accepted his rose, her friends would abandon her; she didn't want to go back to being nobody like she was in elementary school. It hurt. Nobody loved you, nobody talked to you.

So she did the one thing she could do.

She snatched the rose and laughed at him in the face. Her friends joined in and they mocked him.

Feeling hurt, he ran away, thinking that no one would ever love him.

She kept the rose and planned to apologize to him the next day, alone, by herself. But the next day came and she could not find him. Where was he? she wondered.

Only days later did she find out. He had been diagnosed with leukemia for years now and had passed away the day after homecoming.

She knew then, what she had to do.

With tears streaming down her cheek, she drove herself to the cemetery, laid the rose on the grass, and shot herself in the heart, her broken heart next to his grave.

WEEK NINETEEN WINNER: EMILY
PROMPT: Ocean

Many things traumtized me throughout my life. I don't know if that was the affect of the loss of my father, the bullies at school, or Hans Chrisian Andersen's "The Match Girl", but whatever it was, I was it's prisoner.

The sky was black. I had just realized that. Dark, tall, threating clouds rolled and rumbled across the sky. I shivered as goosebumps formed on my arms. This wasn't a pleasant time to run away from home for a little bit.

Farther down the beach I was walking on, I saw a couple. They were laughing and holding hands, whispering passionate words of romance to each other, pecking each other's lips every once in a while. All the air in my body was sucked out of me.

I remembered.

I remembered him.

I remembered our date.

I remembered her.

I remembered the jealousy and heartbreak.

My body grew limp as I collapsed on the ground, my knees pulled up to my chest and my arms rapped around them in a little ball.

It was here.

In this very spot when I died.

When he left.

Everything seemed to so clear now. My hair feathered around me, I closed my eyes and trembled. A tear slipped out of my eye as the ocean took me in it's warm embrace.

WEEK TWENTY WINNER: EMILY
PROMPT: RAIN

Pit, pat. Pit, pat.

The pillow muffled the groans.

Pit, pat. Pit, pat.

The window was in open view of the sky.

Pit, pat. Pit, pat.

Another ballet practice. She grabbed her shoes and headed out the door, shielding her head with her bag.

Pit, pat. Pit, pat.

The same noise against the ballet school's window. She focused on her toe positions, concentrating hard on not to remember.

A little twirl....

A little bow....

How she loved the rain.

A back bend....

A graceful leap....

How she loved the rain.

But she got unfocused. When she tumbled, she saw her. The yellow boots splashed against the puddle, spraying the window. The ballerina gave a little smile. The little girl outside reflected her memories.

But wait.

She happened to know the little girl.

But it couldn't be. They were gone.

And yet, the ballerina glanced up, and she saw a yearing glare. A passionate, hungry look.

The ballerina felt her heart leap to her throat. No, it couldn't be.

But her legs made her. She leapt up and right out the door.

Could it possibly be...?

And her fears and wants came true.

Her lips met his and they reunited in the rain once again.

Pit, pat. Pit, pat.

WEEK TWENTY-ONE WINNER: Hannah
PROMPT: Silence

THE PAINTINGS OF ASH

It was a calm Sunday morning. A stereotypical start, with bluebirds singing and ducks quacking at the pond across the street. The morning light hits the dew, revealing its disguise.

Olivia Walton jogs beside her dog with ear buds connected to her ears. The paperboy, Johnny, rides by and clumsily tosses a wrapped newspaper into the bushes rather than the doorstep. Mr. Shew sleepily walks outside, sighs as he picks the paper from the bush. He quickly returns to the warmth inside his home.

It's the start of a normal day, that would end anything but. Not to sound poetic. It's true. No one knew except for the government that a missile was traveling halfway across the globe to the United States. And the government didn't even know until about an hour before the hit.

It all started with a press of a button. I always imagine that button to be big, and red. A finger flips open a glass barrier and presses the button.

It wasn't very silent in that room, there was a lot of conversation going on, along with the almost-constant ringing of an alarm just outside the door. And it definitely wasn't very quiet when the missile flew upwards and into the black skies. It disappeared behind the dark, unseen clouds in the early hours. Everyone in the base watched through windows and screens, feeling triumphant.

Sometimes, I wonder if the clouds knew what was happening. That they might have even tried to get in the way of the bomb. Even if they did, they would have disintegrated into tiny water particles. All of their efforts would have been in vain.

Or did any of the birds realize what was happening? Any of the animals? Did anyone be so lucky to catch a glimpse of the flying object? Who knows, they might've thought it was an airplane from afar. Maybe even a UFO. They wouldn't have even connected the information when they watched the local news channel the next morning. If they were still alive.

It's 8:37, an hour before contact. There was anything but silence. The only quiet remained in many of the living rooms as frightened citizens watched for instructions. Then there was the sound of hurried packing, the jingling of car keys, the many quick-paced footsteps.

By 9:00, streets and bridges were aligned with trucks and jeeps and every other car out there. Radios were turned on. People sat with their car door open, waiting for the traffic to actually move, heads in their hands or staring out at the sky, as if any second now, they could see that bomb drop.

Cars kept coming. Some people were leaving their cars and bringing a suitcase or their family across the streets and bridges, making it even harder for other cars to enter. Silence was breaking every second, to the point where it almost thought that it couldn't repair itself. But then it came, at about 9:32 in the morning.

It was one of those silences that won't stop haunting you. It gives me goose bumps to think about it now, or to even wonder. Did anyone scream? Did it come from nowhere, or so quick that no one even saw it? Did the victims have a chance to feel what happened to them? If they did, did they know what happened to them? Did they say their final goodbyes or I love you's? No one will ever be able to answer, because anyone who could isn't on Earth anymore.

All that I know, is that the city didn't look like a city anymore. There was black ash, falling from the sky like a burnt snowfall. I specifically remember seeing a ripped up teddy bear, not completely destroyed because of the slight protection of a few melted cars. It emphasized how quiet and empty this place was, if that's possible.

And there were paintings on the walls that still stood. Paintings in black that had texture to them. Imprints of the life that was now blown to bits. I cried when I saw the shorter paintings.

And all that was there was silence. That is what replaced the souls and bodies. There weren't any screaming survivors, or hands reaching dramatically out of piles of rubbish.

There was only silence.

WEEK TWENTY-TWO WINNER: REBEKKA
PROMPT: Reflections

You look into the mirror. Your big brown eyes are as dark as a cold winter night, yet they shimmer like a thousand stars. You smile sweetly at yourself; your pearly white teeth seem to brighten the room. Crinkling your perfect little nose at yourself, you laugh at the mirror. Your lips are as red as the brilliant crimson of a maple’s autumn leaves and full like the writer’s mind with imagination. Your cheeks are rosy like the soft pedals of the cherry blossom. Your long brown hair frames your soft face, elegant large curls like ivy encircling a stone. Your skin is as clear as a cloudless afternoon and light as fresh snow in the moonlight.

Could I get any more beautiful? You think to yourself.

“Hey,” someone says to you nonchalantly.

You look up at her from the mirror. It’s Torian, the most popular and beautiful girl in the whole school. You move to the side, giving her room at the mirror.

“Hey,” you say trying to imitate her, but you don’t sound nearly as cool.

She inspects herself in the mirror and pulls out her chap stick. You raise an eyebrow as she smears it on her lips. You study her pale blue eyes and blonde hair. She looks like the poster child of beauty. You feel like saying something to her.

“Your lips aren’t chapped,” you say hesitantly. Immediately you regret even mentioning it.

She looks at your reflection in the mirror, a puzzling look on her face. “So?”

You feel tempted to say something, but decide not to for fear of making even more of a fool of yourself.

A toilet flushes and a stall door opens. Another young blonde struts out and grabs Torian by the arm and whispers in her ear.

Torian looks at you as if you’re inferior to her and walks about of the restroom, shaking her hips as if she wants you to be jealous. You have a feeling that the other girl made a rude comment about your looks.

You return your gaze to the mirror. Your small, brown eyes are dull. Your teeth are no longer white, your smile not the least bit captivating. Your nose seems too big. Your lips are thin and lack their beautiful crimson colour. Your cheeks don’t seem to blush anymore. Your brown, wiry hair is boring and your curls don’t look as good as they used to. Your skin is blemished and spotted with imperfections. Then you realize that you will never be as pretty as the other girls.

Could I get any more ugly? You think to yourself.

WEEK TWENTY-THREE WINNER: IVI
PROMPT: One

A boy bows. He then turns to the grand piano, waiting for the applause to die down. He rests his hands on the white keys, breathes, then plays like he's never played before. His eyes are shining with passion as beautiful music spills from the large instrument.

A girl stands alone on stage. Music plays. She dances. Dances the night away. She piroettes alone, for she is a prima ballerina. An applause brings pride to her eyes.

A flower blooms in the desert. It is night time there. White blossoms as the moon rises higher and higher. Streaks of pink line the inside of the little flower. Its leaves, thin and delicate, are curled at the ends. The flower is a symbol of beauty in the bleak landscape.

Three things. One similarity.

As the boy plays, his finger misses a note. His entire scale becomes off beat. Dissonance. A horrid sound leaks from the piano. The boy freezes, hands locked in place, his eyes wide with fear. The audience stares. Some have incredulous looks, while others have looks of pity. It is clear, though. The boy is petrified.

The girl turns. Her heart is racing. She turns one too many times, causing her entire dance to be off a beat. She tries to slow down, but in doing so, she looses her balance and falls. A loud snap echoes through the theatre. The music falls flat. The crowd gasps. She lays on the floor, crying not because of pain, but because her dreams have been shattered.

With the rising sun, the flower begins to shrivel. White turns to yellow as its once beautiful petals dies away and fell to the ground. Green turns brown and the dead flower sinks into the sand.

Three different things.

One similarity: all have lost their beauty.

WEEK TWENTY-FOUR WINNER: ---
PROMPT: Greed

No entries.

WEEK TWENTY-FIVE WINNER: MAXY
PROMPT: A tear


Self Portrait

The search for myself begins at a blank canvas.

I cannot find her. I used to know her so well. She was my best friend, with me every step of the way. She was bubbly, kind, lovable, eternally smiling—but even eternity ended. Sometime within the last year, she lost her step. One stumble came after another, and with every fall she was pulled further away from me, until the distance between us grew too vast for me to see where she had gone.

The only place I can think to look in is my paintings. I have a knack for finding things when I have my oil paints, brush, and easel to help me. They are my most trustworthy companions, now that she is gone. Now that he left me, along with all the others I loved. Now that there is nothing else left besides them and the numbing pain.

Gently, I pick up my brush, wondering which color to begin with. I have no reference for this portrait—it feels wrong to use a mirror. When I look in the mirror, I do not see her. I see a lifeless monster.

After a moment's hesitation, I dip the brush in green, the color of my eyes. I carefully trace two sad emerald circles on the white canvas. By the time I fill them in, however, I realize I will not find her here. I wipe the brush off and mix colors furiously until I find a shade of copper. But I do not find her in my copper strands of hair, either.

I decide that appearance is not where she lies. I strip the brush of its current color once again.

I depict parts of books that she often read to lose herself in. I portray scenes from her childhood—the porch swing after dusk, the roof underneath a starlit sky, the theater before a performance. I even outline his face and his heart, held out to her in his hands before they turned cold as they are now. In these things she used to stow herself away. But each attempt is scribbled out before reaching completion, for I cannot see her in any one of them. Countless endeavors, all for naught.

My limbs shake with exhaustion as I lift the brush for one final try. For this, I compose lines of music, the melodies and dissonant harmonies weaving notes in black and white. But the two colors drip together, forming a splotch of grey. I know that she isn't here, either.

A tear of frustration leaks from one eye. I blindly jab the tip of the brush all over the canvas, feeling the fabric rip once. I'm slashing every which way, splashing hues on every corner while more tears stain my cheeks. I don't care now that I'm wasting hours of work. I give up. She is gone. I've lost myself, and I cannot find her again.

I fear what I will see. Even so, I open my eyes, trembling and covered in paint.

The entire canvas is a massive, mottled expanse of grey. Bland, boring grey. No personality whatsoever. I gasp as I take in a single, jagged tear that runs down the middle where my brush sliced through.

I stare at my work in awe, not believing what I've done.

I see her. I have found her.

WEEK TWENTY-SIX WINNER: KRISS
PROMPT: Anger

It was an expensive luxury. Anger, the cheapest of emotions, it was one of the most passionate, the fieriest. I was full of it. I was overwhelmed with something akin to flames, something that was burning up the person I was. Turning me into a monster. Somewhere I kept thinking, “I don’t deserve this emotion, I can’t keep it. It’ll destroy me.” I knew that was the truth. Why couldn’t I follow my own advice? I feel like there are two people inside of me. One’s a monster, and one is just… lost. I am lost. I am angry, so, so angry.

What am I angry at? The world. I’m angry at everyone. I’m angry for everyone. I’m angry for the injustice, for the justice itself, for the need of such decisions. I’m angry at the people who are dying, who are breaking my heart. I’m angry at the people who are living, living just so they can tear me up. I’m angry at myself, most of all. But there isn’t anything in me to tear up. It’s just… nothing. I am nothing. I am lost, alone, angry, searching desperately for something to hold onto, something to keep me alive.

It was a stupid mistake. They just made a stupid mistake. I tried to correct them—failed epically. I tried to correct myself, stumbled over the words I meant to say, returned to the comfort of sarcasm and cruelty. I am comfortable with cruelty, at least, but kindness is what turns me inside out, what exposes the thing I am inside. I don’t know what that is. I’m glad there are no mirrors here, not where I’m looking.

The fear makes me lash out. I’m afraid, God, I’m afraid. Fire, there is fire everywhere inside of me. Everywhere. I snap, twist, snarl—I want to hurt you. I want to see if I can. You made a mistake. I have to make it better. I can’t. I will. I won’t. I will. I won’t. I won’t. I’m too angry to give a damn. And then the fire goes out, quite suddenly, because it has run out of things to burn. And then there is nothing, nothing. nothing. Nothing.

I’m not sorry for what I’ve said. I won’t take it back.

I meant it, but not really.

I was angry until I burnt myself out.

WEEK TWENTY-SEVEN WINNER: JESSICA
PROMPT: Things that scare me when I'm alone

Sitting at home on my own is the worst part of the day.

Everything is silent, everything is empty. No atmosphere at all within this room, within any room.

It's when the silence kicks in and there's nothing to do that bad, horrible thoughts return to my mind burning into my skull like a fire. Like the fire that covered me years ago.

Peeta works in a bakery five days a week, the children are old enough for school so I don't have to look after them. It took me a while to agree to children but they kept my mind off the bad thoughts for a while. Only for a while. Now they were at school they were away as much as their father, five to six hours they are usually away.

I can keep the thoughts away the first hour or two by cleaning the house. Polishing the work tops, tending to the garden, making sure all the toys are away and the painting brushes are clean. But once that is done there is nothing but sitting in front of the television. Every day I do the same. Every day I turn on the television and flick through the channels looking for something interesting, something to keep my mind off everything and anything.

But I am met with the same result, nothing to watch.

So now I sit, in the living room alone with only the silence to keep me company. That is when it starts. That is when the sudden thoughts consume me; hit me like a tidal wave in District 4 on a partially bad storm day. District 4 makes me think of Annie, Annie with her son who is getting older and older, becoming a young man and working to get fish and provide for his mother and his own family.

The last time I saw Annie she told me that he had begun to tie knots when he was having trouble catching fish, almost as a stress relief. He was becoming more and more like Finnick every day.

Finnick.

That's when it hits me. The crippling thought of his family being left without a father and without a husband pushes me back within my seat. His death flashes before my eyes, his body being dragged back down by the ugly horrifying mutations. His body being ripped limb from limb and his horrified face as it happened. It stuck to my brain like a nasty bug, eating away and making my throat close up.

It has been years, many many years since the horrible fight was fought and won. But his face is still in my brain fresh, as though it happened yesterday. I wish I could have saved him. I wish that I could have saved everyone that died in that horrible war and the horrible games which I myself had to participate in.

Glimmer and the District 4 girl who were sentenced to death by myself when I dropped the tracker jacker nest upon them. Their horrible puss filled bodies that lay on the floor as the cannon blew. The poor District 3 boy whose neck was snapped by Cato after I blew up the supplies, Foxface who stole the berries that killed her, Thresh who practically sacrificed himself to save myself by killing Clove. Cato who had the most horrible death of all, I had to kill him to end his life quicker. Otherwise… I can't even imagine the sort of pain he would have gone through. Clove who was killed by Thresh and Marvel who was killed by myself after killing Rue.

Rue.

That was when it all started, that was when the rebellion truly was put into action. Her body slowly drifting away as I sung to her in the middle of the arena, the spear through her stomach, the look on her face as she slowly slipped away.

She saved my life. She saved my life and I couldn't even do the same for her, all I could do was accomplish her last request of being sung to. I even lay flowers around her but that isn't the same. She was the eldest out of her siblings, what must have gone through their minds as they saw their sister murdered. All the families that saw their sons, daughters, sisters, brothers murdered.

I remember as she followed me in the training centre, how she told me about her favourite thing in the world, music. She got my trust, something which not many people could do. The death replayed in my mind over and over as tears hung on. I tried to stop them from pouring down my cheek; the thought of the painting of her that Peeta did made my breath become shallow and my heart pound. I can see her jumping through the trees quickly; she was light on her feet. Her posture and innocence reminded me of Prim.

Prim.

My sister, my lovely caring sister with the hands of a healer taken away from me in one split second. She was reaped; her name was only in the bowl once. But she was reaped. I volunteered to protect her, I volunteered to make sure she was safe and that nothing could harm her. But she was now gone.

Her fair skin, her blonde hair her bright blue eyes and small stature, she had a face which was as fresh as a raindrop. I remember seeing the blonde plait running down her back and the back of her shirt. I remember screaming out her name as the parachutes dropped and the second wave of bombs exploded. And that was it.

I'd lost her.

My sister, the one I was fighting for. She was gone.

Tears streamed down my cheek as I stared at the empty television, all the horrible thoughts of those I had lost and what had happened were flowing around my mind. My sister, my friends, and people I didn't even know were stole away from their families. All to stop the Capitol. To stop the horrible games.

Suddenly a cheerful giggle could be heard outside my home, standing up quickly I looked through the window to see my children running down the path. Their bags high on their backs and smiles on their faces, with my husband walking behind. Moving quickly I did what I always did, I grabbed a tissue and began to wipe my face quickly sniffing loudly to clear my throat. I walked to the hallway wiping my eyes for a few more seconds. I shoved the tissue into my pocket as the door opened.

I put a smile on my lips, one which became genuine as they ran to me with extended arms and cheerful faces. I hugged them for a moment before they ran away yelling about something that happened at school.

My head rose and a kiss was planted on my lips by my husband, he smelt like bread. He always smelt like bread.

"How was your day?"

He would always ask. No exception. I couldn't tell him about my thoughts, the thoughts I have when I am left alone with nothing to do but stare into a blank television. So I would always reply the same words.

"Much better now you've all come home."

WEEK TWENTY-EIGHT WINNER: EMILY
PROMPT: JAPAN, THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO SELF-SUFFICIENCY, DAVE BRUBECK, AND THE ALL ENCOMPASSI-GEGEGEGEGEGEGEGEGEGEGEGE

Whoa. You have to be a genius to be able to make all that really awesome. O.o lol not doin this 1

WEEK TWENTY-NINE WINNER: HOLDEN
PROMPT: Mushy banana

"I was never an apple person. Occasionally I would get in an orange or a pear mood, but never in my life can I remember willingly eating an apple. Not that I was one of those picky kids who seem convinced that they can survive on a diet of pop tarts, cookies, and mucus. I could enjoy a salad as fully as any vegan. I got as much satisfaction from whole-grain toast as the most devoted health nut. But when it came to fruits, I was choosier. I was a connoisseur of exotic varieties: pomegranates, kiwis, mangoes.
But there was one humble fruit that could always hold my interest.
The banana.
But not just any banana. A banana that was just a little too ripe, to the point where colonies of mysterious brown bruises had started to settle across the fruit. When I noticed a banana in our well-stocked pantry reaching this point, I would excitedly settle down for a snack. The peel would practically fall off the banana, and the fruit would dissolve in my mouth, like a guilt-free bar of the finest chocolate.
Pomegranates were expensive. So were kiwis and mangoes and all the other fruits I loved. But my mother was always able to keep a varied assortment of bananas in the pantry, ready for my perusal.
So maybe that’s why, when I arrived with the police, I didn’t notice the silence of the TV she always had on. I didn’t notice the dying plants on the front porch. I didn’t notice the answering machine frantically flashing “12”, anxious to share our own frenzied messages with us, with me, with the police chief, with anybody. I didn’t even notice the peculiar stench in the air that no son should ever have to smell in his mother’s house.
What I did notice was the bananas sitting on the counter, untouched in weeks. They had turned a nauseating black, as if coated with ash. I walked slowly over to the counter and reached for one.
It fell apart in my hands.
The counter was covered in mushy banana, exploding across the granite in every direction. I rested my head in my hands.
Hours later, after the body had been carried out, the coroner’s report been filed, and the police left me alone, my girlfriend walked into the kitchen.
“You should eat something,” she said.
I said nothing.
“Maybe there’s food left in the fridge.”
The flies buzzed around the rotting fruit, a cacophony of muted ambivalence.
Putting her hands on her hips, my girlfriend said, “We should clean that up.”
As I continued to sit in silence, she wiped the mushy banana off of the counter, and through the rest of the bunch into the trash can, much to the dismay of the flies.
She stood looking at me a long time. Trying to peel back my skin.
“Come on. Food.”
She opened the refrigerator.
“Not much in here. An apple. That alright?”
Misinterpreting my silence as approval, she brought a fresh red delicious apple over to me, its perfect red skin reflecting the harsh kitchen light.
I held it in my hand a moment. Sighing, I took a bite.
It was bitter.
My girlfriend joined me with an apple for herself. We sat in silence for a long time, not taking a bite, not saying a word, rambling through our own chaotic internal monologues.
I leaned into her shoulder, and she held me a long time.
At last, I took a second bite of the apple.
It was bitter. It was sweet."

WEEK THIRTY WINNER: EMILY
PROMPT: thermometers and polygraphs

40°.

Slowly, her eyes came up. A man sat on the opposite side in a dim light. “We can make this easy or hard,” he said calmly. Her jaw stiffened as she turned her head. Sighing, he continued, “I see.”

50°.

“We’ll never get anywhere if you keep your mouth shut. Do you want to be proven innocent?” A tear trickled out of her eye. He stared at her over the rim of his glasses as if he were scanning her. “If you know something I don’t, you might want to start talking now.” She shook her head.

60°.

Her fingers shook as she was put in a chair. Her glance never broke from the machine between them. The man smiled weakly at her. “Now, nothing will happen to you,” he started, “and this machine isn’t fool proof. But if you don’t talk, I’m afraid we’ll have to do something.”

Her eyes were burning; her head felt like it would explode. She wanted to say something, but she didn’t know anything—or maybe she did.

She didn’t know what she knew.

70°.

“Answer the damn question!” he shouted. She hunched back into the chair.

“No.”

His face flushed, he threw himself down in his chair and put his face in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Interested, she peered over the desk to see him hunched over.

“I had too.”

80°.

Sweat prickled her forehead. “Why are you doing this?” she said in nothing more than a whisper.

He jolted awake and jerked his head to the side to see what she was staring at. He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “We have too,” he answered.

“But why?”

He glanced up at her. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

90°.

Tears drifted freely down her face. She was dizzy, so dizzy. She wanted it to end.

“How did you know?” she croaked.

He smiled evilly. “We’re the government.”

“No you’re not.”

His smile faded. “This forces me to keep going, you know that?”

She felt her mind start to fade.

100. °

The world seemed to be foggy. She was finding it hard to breath, hard to focus. Her head twisted over to the man, who seemed unaffected.

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

“I did it. I killed her.”

She turned her head around, took one last look at the thermometer, and was gone.

WEEK THIRTY-ONE WINNER: JEANNE
PROMPT: "You're a nerd."

It was all a stroke of luck when we were assigned as partners in English class. When Mr. Chance said my name following her's, I dropped my head and stared deliberately at my desk, bracing myself for a torrent of complaints from her. I inhaled, and heard my therapist's voice saying, Jason, calm down. Take a deep breath. Don't let small things bother you…

It didn't come.

Mr. Chance continued listing off the partners while I stared across the room at her incredulously. She winked at me. Winked.

"I will be giving you some class time today to work on your project. It will be due in two weeks. Get to work," finished Mr. Chance.

She crossed the room to me. "Hi, I'm––"

"I know who you are. You're a Cheerio," I said, cutting her off. Everyone knew who she was.

She laughed, not at all fazed by my bluntness. "Don't want to waste any time at all, do you, Jason?"

My heart leaped at the she said my name and I scolded it for being so stupid. After a moment, I realized she was waiting for me to reply. "Uh, yeah."

"That's great." She sat down in the seat next to me without hesitation. "I know you're damn smart, Jason. I bet you know all about Shakespeare."

I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment. My mom always told me that I blushed like a girl. I found myself wondering if she thought so too. I cleared my throat. "I guess."

She laughed and tossed her dark hair. It smelled of cinnamon. "Not one to talk, are you, Jason? You could help me a lot." The bell rang. "Great, so can you meet me at the library after school today?"

"Of-of course," I stammered. I stare after her slender figure as she left the classroom with a group of giggling friends.

After school, I made my way to the library. I forced myself to relax my facial muscles, but found that I just could not keep a smile off my face at the prospect seeing her. I tried to tell myself that she's shallow and giggly like the other Cheerios. Just cause she smiled at me didn't mean anything.

I found her in a quiet area in the library, browsing the "Classics" section. I stopped for a moment to admire the way her hair caught the rays of sunlight and turned reddish. "Hello," I said. I pushed my glasses up and tried to look casual.

"Jason," she said excitedly. "This is wonderful, we can totally start now!" She sounded like she was seriously glad to study Shakespeare with me. I didn't care; I was glad to see her glad to see me.

The week passed and nearly everyday we worked on our project together. I found myself looking forward to those precious two and a half hours in the library with her. I couldn't focus on my video games or my books because I was thinking of her. Logically, I knew that what I had was fragile and temporary, but in my heart, I desperately hoped that she was different from her friends. Every smile of hers, every compliment she gave me, every breath of cinnamon scent that I breathed in encouraged that desperate hope, and that hope slowly consumed my logic.

It was our last days to work together. I hoped that this wasn't the end of our friendship or partnership or love or whatever this was. I set a laptop in front of us and showed her the completed essay. "It's done."

"Wow, it looks so sophisticated!" She peered closely at the Times New Roman font. "You're so smart, Jason! I'm so lucky to be your partner." She reached around and hugged me. I froze for a moment, not knowing what to do, but then I awkwardly reached around and placed my hands at the small of her back. I inhaled cinnamon, and I felt that desperate hope completely vanish my logic and give me a sense of courage that I never felt before.

When she releases the embrace, I said to her, forming my words carefully, "This is abrupt, but I really like you." Then it all came out in a tumbling rush. "I don't know why. I mean you're a Cheerio and I love Star Wars. You have your hair highlighted and I wear glasses. But I've felt something different from you, and from that hug, I think you do too. I'm willing to take a risk and have this relationship. Will you?"

She didn't say anything at first, and the only sound was my own heartbeat. Then she laughed and I felt a streak of panic. Were girls supposed to laugh at love confessions? "Oh God, Jason, you are funny. Honey, no wonder I love teasing you."

I stared at her. "Of course I am! I think I'm in love with you!"

She raised her voice a bit. "Jason, like you said, I'm a Cheerio and you're just a star wars-loving nerd." She laughed as if it were all a funny joke. "As if that will happen. Nope, my friends and I thought you would be hilarious to flirt with."

Her words pierced my heart and hopes like a shard of ice. My hands shook and I saw a wave of red cloud my vision. "Really?" I asked her, raising my voice. "So I was just for fun?"

I see her smile. That infuriating smile. "Sorry Jason, yes. But it's okay right? You could tell everyone I willingly hugged you and you'll be way more popular. I won't deny the rumors."

I stood up and accidentally bumped over my chair. I felt a bubble of pure fury rise up in my throat, and my words came out louder than I intended. "Is that what you do for fun? Flirting with a nerd?" Someone shushed me from somewhere across the near-empty library, but I didn't care.

"Chill out Jason!" She threw up her hands in surrender. "I'm sorry, 'kay? If I knew you were fucking in love with me, I probably wouldn't have talked to you anymore."

"You think your retarded, pathetic apology matters? You and your bitch friends, always playing with other people's emotions." I shouted at her. The same person from somewhere in the library yelled at us to shut up.

She shook her head. "Now you've just gone crazy." She stood up and tried to move but I shoved her back down on the chair. "What the hell?" she screamed at me. "Get away from me, creep. Go play with your action figures and fucking leave me alone. Psycho."

That broke me. The rage bubbles popped leaving me a burning sensation throughout my body, feeding the red haze that crept across my vision, setting a fire that burned through my consciousness. She must feel my pain.

~*^*~

It was night when I calmed down and became sane. I was kneeling on the ground, in an alley. The light from a flickering streetlamp was barely bright enough for me to see the sight in front of me, but I did. The horrid sight. A girl limp and lifeless, her throat and face torn by what seemed like claws. My fingernails were crusted with dried blood and a sudden realization hit me. A wave of panic threatened to suffocate me, so I tried to take deep breaths. Instead, I choked on her smell, proving that mauled girl before me truly was her. I broke into tears, her lingering scent of cinnamon haunting the night air and me.

WEEK THIRTY-TWO WINNER: AUTUMN
PROMPT: Dr. Suess

“Don’t listen to them, Ellie. You can be a princess if you wanna.” I was glad her head was buried in my stomach because I didn’t want my little sister to see me cry. She deserved strong people too.

I quickly swiped away the teariness when I felt her lifting her head from my shirt. “Are you sure, Mary?”

“You can be a princess with or without hair.” I freaking hated little kids. Would it be inappropriate to call them bitches?

“Pinkie promise?”

“Pinkie promise,” I repeated, linking my little finger with hers. She sniffled a disgusting, snot-nosed sniffle, and it only took one glance between the both of us to crack up.

“I’m tired,” Ellie whispered, curling into me.

“Do you want to take a nap?” I asked her. She nodded and squeezed tighter into me. I had math homework, but I just rubbed her back as she slipped easily into abandon.

Mom, as per usual, came home in a harried bang. I saw the windows shake when she slammed the door. She clicked past the kitchen, but upon sight of us, she silently kicked off her heels, whispering, “How long has she been out?”

“Almost two hours,” I replied.

“She has rehearsal today,” said Mom.

“I know.”

With a frown, Mom nudged Ellie. “Honey, you have rehearsal in twenty minutes. Are you too tired to go?”

“What?” Ellie murmured, blinking away the tiredness. The buzz in my sleeping leg roared in protest with her movement.

“Rehearsal,” Mom repeated.

“No! I mean, I can go! I’m perfectly awake, see‽” Ellie popped up, suddenly pure energy. She had a lot of practice with it.

“Then let’s go,” Mom said, taking her by the hand and leading out the door. Once they were gone, I shuffled up the staircase. For a minute, I had a staring contest with my math textbook, but then I tossed it aside and picked up a battered paperback instead. Even with Ellie gone, mathematics would never be a priority.

Mom came home a few minutes later and knocked on my door. “Mary,” she greeted me, the smile on her face accentuated with ever-present worry lines. “So Ellie was sleeping again.”

It was a statement with so many silent letters that they became silent words, but they were all words we were too afraid to say because saying them aloud made them real, and sometimes reality was too hard to face.

“It’s probably nothing. Rehearsal is very strenuous,” I said, but I couldn’t make the words sound carefree and airy. They were nothing but heavy lies.

“I should have listened to the Dr. Erland,” Mom said, not looking me in the eye. Something in me flared. Her tone wasn’t accusing, but it didn’t need to be. Everything had double meanings when things got like this.

“It’s what she wanted,” I said shortly.

“Sometimes what’s right isn’t the most fun.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I told her. “I have a lot of math homework.”

“Okay.” Mom shut the door on her way out, so I trudged right ahead to chapter twelve. At least, I attempted to, but my nagging brain wouldn’t allow it. It seemed to find worry a more appropriate path to follow.

Ellie had been diagnosed with leukemia three years ago, and the battle had been tough. Obviously. Every birthday, the doctors told us, a miracle, and Mom and I made sure to count them that way. This year, though, after Ellie’s eighth birthday, they’d told us she seemed better. She kept coming in for her weekly check ups, and they said everything was looking good.

They’d also told us that she should refrain from participating in the community production of Seussical, but it was all she wanted. Ever since her first production, Ellie couldn’t get enough of the stage. It was where she belonged. She was too bright for the trials of daily life; she was a star. Aside from that, she adored Dr. Seuss like no other. The first book she’d learned to read was Green Eggs and Ham, and she devoured the insignificant rhymes from there. Typical. Ellie begged and she pleaded, but Mom remained a skeptic, so I begged and I pleaded and we begged and we pleaded together until Mom had had enough.

Ellie had been getting really tired this week, and Mom was freaking out because she’d stopped going to the doctors every week in favor of rehearsal. I tried to tell her it was fine, but the words felt like chalk in my mouth…heavy lies.

On cue, Mom knocked on my door. I didn’t even bother the dive for my math book before she entered. “I scheduled for Ellie to go to Dr. Erland’s in two days.”

“Okay,” I answered flatly.

“Okay,” she repeated, leaving the door open as she swept away.

That was the beginning of the end.

“This…isn’t…fair!” Ellie yelled through her sobs, slamming her fists on the side rails of the hospital bed. “I feel fine!”

I saw a passing nurse flinch at Ellie’s volume, and I hurried to shut the door. Meanwhile, Mom replied with another round of, “I’m sorry, honey,” as if repetition was the key to making the bandage stick. “But you heard what the doctors said.”

“I feel fine!” Ellie yelled, her voice cracking hoarsely. It was Wednesday, the day before her scheduled appointment. Ellie had passed out at rehearsal, and she’d been whisked to the hospital in an ambulance. I wonder how those bitches who told her she couldn’t be a princess felt now. “Just one show!”

“Ellie, the doctors said no.”

A nurse knocked. “Mrs. Kane, could we please see you outside for a moment, please?” And then it was just the two of us.

“It’s not fair,” Ellie repeated, angrily scrubbing away her tears. “Mary, can you make Mom let me be in the show?”

“I don’t think Mom’s budging, Ellie,” I told her carefully. This sentiment was met only with deeper sobs that wrenched at my heart. I stood there stupidly, not knowing what to do. “Okay, Ellie, Ellie, stop crying. How about—”

Mom came back in, taking a deep breath at the sight of Ellie. “Mary, I’m going to take you home.”

Ellie gripped my hand desperately, digging her nails into my palm. I whispered, “Be ready for me on Saturday.”

I think we all know what comes next.

So in the end it was my fault. I killed my sister. I took her to that performance of Seussical, and I let her go on stage. I let her sing to her death, with a perfect, effervescent smile as she hid that she was slowly withering away in the place she loved most. She was gone because I killed her, and all I had left was guilt, pride, an entire town that adored her, her favorite Dr. Seuss books, and a mouth full of heavy lies.

WEEK THIRTY-THREE WINNER: YUE
PROMPT: broken stoplight

In the beginning, it was my mother who dragged me into ballroom dancing, and in the end, she was the one that whisked me out. My mother wanted to raise her son as a gentleman—plus, all the rich kids did it, so there was no other explanation for me not to do it. But unlike the rest of the rich kids, I didn’t dread Monday rehearsals. In fact, I lived for it.

Since then, I have always dreamed of being a professional ballroom dancer. Call me all the names you want: gay, faggot, I’ve been through all that. But there was something pristine and innocent about gliding across the dance floor that lifted me off of my feet and allowed me to fly. It was an inexplicable kind of beauty, that only people intimately connected to dancing could understand. The breathlessness, the music, everything was so perfect, in sync, in rhythm. Every step had its place; every move was executed with elegance. There was so much feeling to be interpreted through a single minute, all the emotions.

I was never much of a modest person, so I guess it’s fair for me to boast that I was one of the best ballroom dancers that my teacher had ever seen. I attended a prestigious arts academy, an hour away, before I was forced to go to an all-academic school following my freshman year. Still, the lessons continued through my scarce allowance every week, no matter how many times my mother insisted I should quit through her subtlety of words. “I would like you to join soccer… Oh, but you’re doing ballroom dancing already,” she would comment dryly.

It wasn’t until my senior year that my mother blew out on me all at once. My first choice was a small college with one of the best arts program in the country. I was applying for a handful of other schools, but none that focused much academically. They were all recommendations from my ballroom teacher. On the other hand, she wanted me to apply to Ivy schools and Stanford and Berkeley. “Honestly, Justin, what do you think you’re going to do, majoring in performing arts? Do you think you’re actually going to make money?” No matter how much research I gave her on the statistics of finding a job within the performing arts field, no matter how much I debated with her, pleaded, resisted, begged, all she did was raise her eyebrows at me wearily. No was a no.

I ended up going to Cornell, where I graduated with an engineering degree.

I hated it.

Trust me when I said I tried to give it a chance. I tried so hard. But it was too many facts; there was no room for freedom. I couldn’t express myself the way dancing allowed me to. I was enclosed in a box, where they tried to feed me all the knowledge. I barely passed my final that year, but only thanks to a generous curve. Had my professor not liked me, I would have probably flunked out of college.

Onwards I went with my life, where I became an electrical technician. I specifically fixed public electricity failures, like power outages and broken stoplights. It was a constant reminder, the broken stoplights, mocking me for never achieving my goals. The red light had turned upon me just when I was about to launch my career.

One day, I was working on a stoplight on the intersection of Castaway Avenue and Reverie Boulevard. Whoever named those two streets were probably the king of corny. But still, it gave me a nostalgic feeling: two blocks down Reverie was my old dance studio. I’d moved away for a while, but this place was where home was for me, truly. This was the place of cold ice cream and flying feet, the place where my dreams almost came true. It was where all my memories were stored.

I let out a bitter laugh, and my partner gave me a weary glance. He was an old man, in his fifties. I was his sidekick, doing the actual dirty work, since his body had gave up long ago. Once we rounded to the intersection, he slowed the car to a stop. He threw me a wrench and told me to go up there, while he kicked up his legs and leaned back in his seat.

I rolled my eyes, but I needed the paycheck, so I complied like I always did. I was tugging away at a wire when a couple dressed in flamboyant dancing paraphernalia. I expected to feel a pang of jealousy, but instead, I felt anger. I was here, slaving away, and they got to pursue their dreams? What the hell? Upon these thoughts, I failed to realize I was gripping my scissors so tightly that I accidentally cut an important wire.

Whoops.

Below me, my partner called out, “Justin, done yet?” I was about to shout back a no, but I paused. I looked at the broken stoplight, so helpless and blowing in the wind, and I turned back to the two dancers. I took a deep breath.

“Yeah,” I said softly.

“What?”

“Yeah,” I repeated, more forcefully this time. I felt the old crane, creaking me down back to the ground. “I think I’m done running away from my dream,” I said, looking up at the stoplight. The second the crane reached the bottom, I jumped off and ran down Reverie, while my partner called behind me, yelling something. Something that was completely irrelevant to my life now.

When I finally reached the dance studio, I was completely out of breath.

“Looks like someone’s out of shape,” a familiar voice rang through the room.

“Carla?”
“I knew you could never let go of dancing. Took you long enough,” she said. She was wearing blue sequined dress, her hair tied up neatly in a bun, as if she was waiting for me all this time. “Let’s dance.” She held out her hand.

I gladly took it.

WEEK THIRTY-FOUR WINNER: MARIA
PROMPT: water slides

June 8th of 2004 was my first day that I'd been allowed to go to the city without my parents. I was 8 years old and a sort of thrill ran through me. Adrenaline pumped as I rushed into the gates of the park with Allie and Livie and Brent, bursting to see the wonders of the giant waterpark that we had been told tales of for ages by the older kids. Every carefully worded story we heard was layered with an aura of myth, and sometimes we had doubt as to if this kingdom was actually there. But oh, it was.It was realer than they ever imagined.

Ten steps in, we could see it's full glory. The majestic slides spiraling towards the sky away from us to unimaginable heights. They reached towards the heavens with their brightly colored tubes. They were on their way to something that could only be Godly.
One of the slides caught my eye in particular.
Bright red, it stood at the edge of my frame of vision. It looked lonesome. Every other slide had dozens upon dozens of eager kids straining against the managers to get their ride like a charging mob. Yet the red slide was left alone. Not a single boy or girl there.

I felt bad for the poor slide, and at the base of the park (where we could just feel the mist coming off of the waters and cooling our summer heated skin), when everybody else ran to the biggest and scariest ones, I took Allie's hand and brought her to the friendless one.

Fact: I was in love with Allie. When I told my brother this, he laughed at me. He told me no. You're not in love. You're eight years old, you idiot, you don't even know what love is. But he was wrong, I knew it, because I was precisely aware of what love was and I felt it every time I saw her. I would give up my place in line for her and if she wasn't so smart and wasn't so much better than me, I would even trade homework grades for her if mine was higher.

She was beautiful and smart and her jokes were hilarious and I liked how she talked and how she looked and how she moved her hands when she spoke and... I just loved her, okay? I thought she loved me too but I didn't dare ask her.

Allie looked over at me, confused. "Where are we going? Why aren't we going to the big slide, the one they always talk about They say that it's the best, you know."

"Yes. I know," I said, then sternly added, "But it's not my favorite and I want to go on this one and you're not going to change my mind."

"But why?"

I loved her questions, how she wanted to know everything and her eyebrows raised at me in varying degrees. What I didn't like was answering them. I always ended up sounding like an idiot.

"It looked lonely. Look at all the others. They have enough love and they're being cared for and they're probably really happy. This one is my favorite because it needs love and I will be the one to give it so it is mine." I slapped myself inwardly for how awkwardly the sentence came out. It sounded better in my head.

"Nate, slides don't have feelings. They're not /alive./"

"Irrelevant."

"Okay. You're crazy, but I guess I'll go with you. It does look like it needs some love."
(I need some love, too! my brain yelled to her. She didn't pick up on the mindwave.)

We climbed the barely rusting steps that creaked beneath our feet and each stride took us closer and closer to the stop. We were climbing a mountain, it felt like. Conquering the journey to big-kid-hood that every kid took at their first visit to the waterpark.

At the top of the mountain, there was a guard to our entry into the older world. He was a college student home for summer who wore a bored look on his face, dull eyes scanning the microcosm below him. He had made the journey so many years before that he didn't even care anymore about the rush.

His line of sight centered on us, and he arched his eyebrows and his eyes widened. "You're going on this one? Are you sure you're in the right place?"

"Of course we are. Why wouldn't we be?" I asked, suspicion rising in my voice.

"It's haunted. Writing inside. Spooky stuff. Nobody's been on it in 20 years. It's a pretty nice job up here, getting paid for doing nothing."

I looked Allie in the eye, and as expected she looked straight back with a determined look. She was so brave. She would definitely go on a haunted slide without a second thought. She wasn't the kind of girl who would be afraid. And I wasn't the kind of guy who would be either. Especially with her.

"We're going on it," I announced loudly, and sat inside it with Allie. She smiled at me and held my hand and told me not to die because then she'd have to bring my body back home and that would be a drag. I laughed too loudly at this.

And the ride began. We were submerged in total darkness and I couldn't see anything and I could just feel her hand and darkness water darkness water darkness water darkness water darkness water. Light.
We made it to the end without a scratch. All of my thoughts of being transported to another world and being eaten by mutant caterpillars disappeared and I could breathe.

I looked over at the bravest girl in the world and we grinned at each other. We were old now. We had made it, and we had made it together.

Making it across a big threshold of your life with a girl makes you boyfriend and girlfriend, right?

The attempted kiss and the slap afterwards seemed to disagree.

WEEK THIRTY-FOUR WINNER - YUE
PROMPT: Fedora

Damn it. Goddamn it.

This is the third that’s slipped from my thin and weathering fingers. Third. Goddamn it, I thought I was better. I thought she was better.

My eyes feel caked and dry and I can’t breathe—

She was the third. The third.

Was. I hate past tense. I hate it so much. It makes it sound like a distant memory, so intangible, a remembrance that some things will never repeat itself again. That some things will fade away and that some things will be buried under the earth along with the hundreds of rotting bodies in over-garnished wooden boxes.

One day I will grow old and forget her. I'm so afraid of forgetting her. She was—goddamn it, she is and forever will be—a free spirited beautiful fedora-loving soul. I don’t want to ever forget her and—

I still can’t believe she did it.

God, I can’t. I just can’t imagine her lifeless limp body never laughing again. I can’t imagine her stuck under a muck of muddy terrain. I can’t imagine going on with my work like it never happened.

I should’ve seen the signs. I should’ve. I underwent through all the training and they showed me the goddamn signs. She was good at covering her thoughts up, but still I should’ve know I should’veshould’veshould’ve.

But I didn’t.

I became shrouded in this thought that she was slowly emerging. She started smiling, talking, laughing. I thought I was winning. I thought I was helping her.

But I killed her.

I can already imagine my other psychiatrist friends who will do their psychoanalysis shit with me even though I’m one of them and they’ll pat my back and reassure me that it wasn’t my fault and who else could’ve known and oh-you-poor-baby and they’ll rub my back. They’ll tell me that I’ve saved so many lives and this one was out of reach and darling-it’ll-all-be-okay like regular psychiatrist protocol.

I don’t believe in anything anymore. I came into this business thinking that I could be a silent superman, saving the world from one depressed kid to another, thinking how difficult could this possibly be? I thought it would be easy: comfort, empathize, listen.

The day before she died, she told me she trusted me and she gushed to me all her thoughts. Everything. Everything about her life that sucked, and all the good stuff in between. We went overtime by four hours, but I thought it was worth it.

God, I let myself believe that it meant she was healed.

No one ever really heals though. Not completely. But stupid goddamn immature me didn’t know any better.

I killed her.

No one else would’ve known, but that’s what I was supposed to be here for. And I ended up failing her and her family and her friends. I ended up failing myself.

I used to imagine I was this wonderful, magnificent person, making the society a better place one person at a time. Then the first one left, and the second. I used to think I could actually help people, but instead, they kept dying. Now the third will never open her black raven eyes again and grin with her crooked, imperfect teeth and shed her translucent tears and piggy snort with her five year old laugh and never joke about sex or boys or life.

Before she left, she handed me her fedora. I should’ve known. But I convinced myself that it was because she was thanking me for finally letting her release her soul.

I didn’t realize it would be so literal.

And so now I’m crying and tears are dripping and I really can’t see anything except for her stupid goddamn fedora that she left. It’s so ugly and brown and plain and so… her.

I miss her. Already, this twisting, burning feeling within me. I don’t deserve to live. I killed three lives and I don’t deserve to fucking live, but in the twisted feeling of mine, I’m scared to let go. I am a sick, sick disgusting human being.

So instead I run to a local gasoline station and buy a tank of gas and a lighter the color of blood. Once I finish dumping all the contents of my carton along the wooden floors, I flick the lighter into flames and toss it into the oil-soaked stack of papers.

For a few seconds, I wait for the entire house, the office, the torture chamber, whatever I should call it, to catch on fire. Slowly, the flames consume the place, devouring through my grandmotherly loveseat bloomed with red hideous flowers, the rows and rows of books on psychology, the years of notes of my former patients and my current. The flame hisses and breathes to life, and the entire house erupts into a dizzying blaze, slowly withering everything into blackened ashes.

I am still wearing her fedora as I turn around and never look back to the burning fortress of godforsaken memories.

WEEK THIRTY-FIVE WINNER: TEZ
PROMPT: a Ferris wheel

We do not talk about the war.
Outside, out in the streets, it’s as if the city is waking up from the longest night in the world, but us…as for us, we’re still in here with our blinds drawn down and the sheets pulled over our heads.

“Must you watch that?”
I drop the curtain back, looking away from the window.
“I…I don’t know what you mean.” Caught between the window and him, neither of which I deserve, I look at the thin line where the skirting board meets the floor.
“Oh, don’t pretend. I see you watching that wheel, of course I do, of course I do. Every morning when you get up at dawn, I know you, I know you. You stand in the kitchen in your nightclothes just so, but with the curtains flung back.” so that if they cared the whole street could see you.
One hand goes self-consciously to my throat, clutching at the ghosts in my collarbone. We do not talk about the things we see; we do not talk about the world outside, and although the neighbours may talk about us they do not talk to us. They do not think him a hero like the rest, if only because of what happens at night.
I tell him again that I don’t know what he’s talking about, but we both do, we always do, which is why we so seldom feel the need to speak. Yet I had thought that the Ferris wheel was mine, though I was a fool to ever think so. Looking out between the chimneys from the window facing south and the stairs on the landing, you cannot miss the sight of something so brassy and bold. If he cared to look, he would see it, anyone would. I watch it because I do not know what else to do, because despite its bright lights and such promises it turns slowly, painfully, with such monotony and silence that I can hardly stand it, such that when he is out I draw all the curtains and weep.
I look because there are few other sights that provide relief between him and the neighbours in the rest of the building that we cannot bear to face in our self-imposed exile.
We do not talk about neighbours. Sometimes, although they are the ones who have brought about our ruin, I find it quite impossible to believe there are any other people in the world.
“Oh, don’t be silly,” I say softly.
“It’s not for us, out there. You know it.”
“Of course I do, dear.” I pour the kettle and bend down to kiss his cheek, lightly, coldly. He shudders. “Now drink your tea.”

If I look of the window, or I’m hanging out the laundry on the roof, I can see the spires of the cathedral and hear those bells, those bells dictating every minute of my life, reminding me that I’m still awake. All of it feels as far away as those places he went, those things he heard and saw that they say I will never even begin to comprehend, that leave him weeping like a child at night. I will never get to understand the things that I can see out of the window whenever I dare to draw back the net curtains to contemplate what I could have, should have, made of my life.
We do not talk about what could have been.

“Where’s the post?”
“I hadn’t brought it up yet.”
“What do you mean you haven’t brought it up yet?”
“I mean just what I said.” I face him evenly, boldly, quite forgetting myself- or maybe remembering myself, remembering the kind of person that I had once been, who wouldn’t have taken anything like this from anyone.
We never talk about the way we were.

He works in the city. It was a long time after his return that he began to look for work, and even longer for him to find any. I waited and we grew thinner than we had been all through the longest winter of the war. It isn’t possible to live on shame and fear for very long.
Every morning, he runs like clockwork; like a piece of clockwork that’s slow and faltering but that would never dream of stopping altogether because the shame would be too great.

I hold the door open for him; nothing has changed.
“Have a good day, darling.”
I have waited six years for this, for the days when I would get back the honour of getting his coat for him, telling him to have a good day if such things existed, and seeing him off at the door.
If there is one thing I had missed, more even than his presence in the bed next to me at night or his laugh or the smell of his cigarettes, it was the creak of his shoes going out onto the landing to catch the morning tram.
We never talk about the things we got back.

I shut the door behind him. I will be there, waiting, when the tram comes back upon the cathedral clock striking six. He would not ever know that I had left my place at the door, not waiting for the ghost of a man who had left that morning but the one who had left however many years ago, taking me in his arms and kissing my cheek chastely in the doorway.
I don’t know why I still wait for the return of that man, but I do.

And now I am quite alone. Out of the window I watch the cathedral, the birds, the Ferris wheel turning so hopefully, so brightly yet so wretchedly; such stunning heights being wrenched away from the stars and crawling back to earth, I can do nothing but lean back against the door and sink to the floor.

WEEK THIRTY-SIX WINNER: DANA
PROMPT: Families

When I next see you, Nadine, you will be older than I ever imagined.

In my eyes, you will always be that tiny baby girl who we rescued through the fire.

An eye for an eye. A life for a life. The villain is punished, and the hero always wins.

That’s how it is in fairy tales. But if it were real life, would that make Jardin a villain? For it was he, my brave, valiant husband, who ran into the burning house to rescue you.

You, his baby girl.

I told you that you were adopted, and it was too easy a lie to tell. After all, you took after Jardin, and had little resemblance of me. When you were older, you asked who the man in the photograph was, why he looked like you.

I told you he was my husband, that he had died before your first birthday. That much is true. I also said that your daddy was Italian, like Jardin. That is also true.

I am writing to tell you all this, because when I next see you, my resistance will be crumbling. I will embrace you and tell you that your father and mother didn’t want you, that you were a throwaway kid.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, yet if I told you that, I am sure you would believe me.

When you ran away from home, I knew in my heart where you had gone. Yet I did not chase you, nor did I follow you.

I knew you had gone away to escape the shunned life your connection to me had brought. People questioned your dark eyes and olive skin, and eyebrows raised at the mention of you, the adopted girl with the pretty, raven locks. I remember feeling shunned that way, when I was young, for I, too, was often the odd one out, what with my gangly legs and thick accent. That is why I did not chase you, although I heard you make your escape at midnight when you thought I was sound asleep; I did not chase you, even though I watched you, through my bedroom window, hop on your bike and wave goodbye to the house, sadly, solemnly, almost.

Where did my little, carefree girl go? She who danced through life on her toes, ever smiling?

I know you have always been curious about me, yet my elusive answer never pleased you. “Did you ever have any children?” “Where did you live, before you came to America?”

Now I hope you will be satisfied with my answer. All those childhood questions... Maybe my silence encouraged you to run away. Although I hope it is untrue, maybe you thought that I was too preoccupied to care about you.

I thought about you, every moment of the day, Nadine. Even before you left.

As a young lady in Italy I had been lucky to marry a man so fine as your daddy, but I spent his every last penny when we immigrated to America. To keep up with this social-climbing wife of his, he had to borrow money from his parents, who died in poverty.

They died in poverty, because of me; but up to the time of their death they had never been able to forgive their son.

But really, it wasn’t their son’s fault. It was mine.

Because I was so selfish as a young lady, I have grown to be a bitter old woman.

When last year you sent a letter I wondered if I was a horrible human being. I had caused two elderly people to be unhappy and poor, one loving husband to take much undeserved blame, and one beautiful, lovely daughter to run away.

I read your brief note with displeasure because I was trying not to remember you. Maybe, I knew it was wrong in my heart, but I tried to turn over a fresh page in my book.

It didn’t work.

The memories that I had pushed away came back, stronger, encouraged by your hopeful message.

When I had worked up enough courage to look at your photograph, I experienced only bitter shock.

How did that scowling ten-year-old transform, eight years later, into an eighteen-year-old beauty, slick with suntan oil and glistening with glamor? For it is true that eight long years without you have passed.

I cannot bring myself to tell you, in person, that I am so remorseful of my actions. What if, instead of the truth healing us, it deepens the ocean that sets us apart?

When you were still my little girl, you were too young, and I was too old. There wasn’t anything to bond us together. I tried to engage you in multiple activities, things I later learned you weren’t interested in, although you pretended you were.

Did you attend the numerous camps and programs just to make me happy? Did you like those sewing or woodcarving or pottery camps? Maybe you had suffered injuries, yet managed to keep a smiling, happy face.

I am most worried, though, if you hid your internal wounds, the kind that cut too deep to be healed.

When you left me, I optimistically felt glad that I had sent a well-rounded young lady into the world. Although I was concerned for you, I didn’t worry too much.

Maybe that was my mistake.

I cannot imagine anything that would make you want to visit your mama again. But if you do, my door will always be open to you.

WEEK THIRTY-SEVEN WINNER: EMILY
PROMPT: fear

The house was one that was always well lit. Through its circular windows, there was not one speck of dust anywhere. No lights were ever turned off. Nothing ever seemed to move from its place.

But the most peculiar thing about the house was the person inside.

Nobody had ever seen the owner. Some even doubted there was an owner, even if they didn’t any reasonable explanation. Some thought it was a ghost; others, a trickster and a lazy electric company.

What they did not know was that in the top floor of the house there was one room that had the drapes always closed. On the bed sat a very pale and thin woman, straggly brown her curled in front of her face. Her face was hollowed, her eyes dull.

Once she had been beautiful. Once she had been reckless.

But it had all changed one night. It was dark, the moon and stars concealed by clouds. A single car twisted down a curving, steep road at a dangerously fast speed. Its top was down, two women in the backseat and a man in the front, holding the woman in the passenger seat’s hand. Behind them was another car, also a convertible with its top pulled down as well. Two men sat in the front seats, two women in the back.

All of the occupants of both cars were laughing wildly, shouting things that were lost in the wind. The car in the back was catching up the first car. When it did, the driver turned to the left and bumped it. The passengers of the first car laughed. They continued hitting each other lightly with each others cars, until one of the women screamed. Both drivers looked ahead, and were met with blinding lights. The first car steered out of the way, its wheels sliding off the edge of the road, bringing the car down with it. The second car hit it head on.

All of the passengers but one woman was killed.

The one woman was in the first car. When the car had fallen off the edge, she was thrown out of the car and onto a patch of dry grass. Her injuries were borderline severe, but she lived as the car tumbled onto the ground below, lying upside down, the other occupants necks broken and heads bleeding.

The sole survivor now sat in the house alone. She had been like that for the past ten years. The only thing ever on her mind was the sound of screeching metal, the panic she felt when she couldn't move, the screams echoing through the air.

When the confusion had unclouded and she was told what happened.

Her mother occasionally visited the house early in the morning, dropping off food and trying to consol her daughter.

She never spoke. She rarely ever moved. She would sit on the bed, no expression ever on her face. Her mother would sit next to her and cry, telling her daughter that she lost people too.

But she could never tell her mother that it was her fault. That it was her fault that her sister, her sister’s fiancé, her best friend, her boyfriend, and their friends all died because of a stupid idea to race down that hill.

She knew she could never step outside again. She knew she could never talk again. She knew she could never live again.

She knew she couldn’t. She was afraid of taking more souls.

Her mother tried to get psychiatric help for her, but she couldn’t afford it while trying to balance house payments and food payments for her and herself. Her mother thought she could help her on her own.

When her mother died seven years later, she sat on her bed still, not knowing what happened.

Three weeks later, she met the same fate, writhing in agony as hunger pained her stomach.

But she knew she deserved it.

WEEK THIRTY-EIGHT WINNER: YUE
PROMPT: Guitar with missing string

My grandfather carried the guitar with him everywhere he went. It was an old, old guitar, older than my father and I combined. The paint had chipped off in places, revealing the raw and naked color of the original wood, and the remaining paint resembled mysterious islands and countries of the world. The case was battered and ugly, stickers from decades ago peeling off and faded. The strings on the guitar had rusted and it was missing a single string.
It was the single string that my grandfather told the story of, everywhere he went. His audience ranged from barely walking toddlers to seniors as old as him. He always began with these words, “I have lived a great and terrible life.”
He would proceed to take out his guitar, the battered, missing-stringed guitar and take two tentative strokes before continuing. “This guitar is an ancient one. So old it has seen the world explode in Hiroshima, so old that it makes George Bush seem like a youngster.” He pauses and takes off his glasses. Wiping them on his shirt, he continues, “When I fought in World War II, I took this guitar with me. The world was a dark place then—the only colors that ever appeared were red of blood and fire and black, of the ashes spew.
“But this guitar, it brought another color. For my fellow soldiers, I played every night, and we forgot about the dying world. Just for a few minutes, if we were lucky, an hour at most, but this music helped us forget the world of people dying mercilessly.” He sighs and touches the guitar fondly.
“Escape from reality, however, is virtually impossible, so it turns out. We were always slammed back into the real world, and we were sent off to fight. And more people died. And we killed even more. One day, we were marching, the soldiers and I to a different camp with all our belongings, and we came across a helpless lady. She was sandwiched in between two slabs of concrete, and we all knew she was done for. She knew herself too. She asked us to stay with her because she was afraid of dying alone. All her life, she’d been alone, she told us, and she didn’t want to be alone when she died. We sat by her side until James, one of the soldiers, nudged me and told me to play for her. We sat under the darkness and I sang and played for her until my voice was sore. Then, the others started singing for me, while I pounded away on my guitar. Until a string snapped in half.
“It was strange, like a strange echo, when the string snapped. Then there was silence, and a bloody cough. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. She leaned over and touched the broken string of my guitar. ‘Thank you,’ she said again, and the color drained from her eyes and her arms fell limp. We all got up, and we kissed her forehead, one at a time. And when it was my turn, I tore the string from the guitar and put it with her hair. I said, ‘Thank you. Thank you too.’
I never replaced the string of this guitar. Because it reminded us all of war, the horror, the ugliness. I kept it as a reminder to myself, and all of us.” He would pack away his guitar right then, and turn away from the audience. He didn’t want anyone to see him cry.
But we all knew. We all knew.
A few days ago, my grandfather passed away. He gave me his guitar and with a croak of his dying breath, he told me to continue his legacy. And so this guitar sits with me on my lap as I sit on the rickety subway of New York. My eyes are still crusted with tears when a young lady flops into a seat beside me. “Handkerchief?” she asks me, waving a white sheet of cloth in front of my face. I gratefully take it while she stares at the guitar case.
“That,” I say, patting the case, “was my grandfather’s.”
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
“Yes, it is. He lived a great and terrible life, you know…”

WINNER FEB 1 - 10, 2013: HOLDEN

The cold breeze claws at my skin, and I pull my arms inside my sweater, retracting my shivering limbs like a tortoise into its shell. The turtleneck sweater may be hideous – I got it from my grandmother when she died – but in a situation like this it’ll do just fine. There doesn’t seem to be a single person out here on the tundra; not a single person to mock me for the fading “WELCOME TO ALASKA!” decal, the poorly drawn fish, polar bears, and pine trees surrounding the peppy slogan, “COME VISIT THE TOP OF THE WORLD!”
I’ve got to get into town. My day of trout hunting has been a failure, with only three fish flopping around in my leather satchel. I look up and see the sun swiftly moving towards the horizon. I follow it; my mother always told me that the sun sets in the north, and that’s the direction the town is. I skip along after the retreating sun, humming One Direction songs to keep my spirits up.
Suddenly, I notice a patch of forest darker than the rest. No matter how close I get to it, it’s still as if someone had created a spotlight capable of shining darkness instead of light and shone it on this patch of the woods. It’s not the black of a lightless night, though; it’s more the black you see when you squint your eyes closed: if you stare at it long enough, it starts to get texture, patters start to appear and disappear, and sometimes even wisps of color dance across your field of vision. There’s something more to that kind of darkness, and that’s what I saw in the forest.
I seem to float towards it, attracted like a magnet. Then I notice two red lights peeking out through the shimmering blackness; they don’t move. I hear a rumbling roar, a mix between the purr of a cat and the growl of a dog; a roar that sets the pebbles vibrating at my feet. I’m literally frozen in fear: I try to turn around, I can’t; I try to move my arms, I can’t; I try to run away, I can’t; I try to scream, to scream at the top of my lungs and maybe get some help. But I can’t. I am drowning in glue.
Another ice-cold sound from the dark spot of the woods, and finally I’m able to squeak out “help,” so quiet I’m not even sure it reached the ears of the creature with the roar and the red eyes. I might just be making things up, but the red specks seem to be getting closer and closer.

*****

The passing tourists laugh at me for wearing a sweater to the beach, but I just smile and look away, accepting their teasing. I don’t know, maybe I expected it to be warmer on this vacation. I step out from the beach house this morning wearing absolutely nothing, ready for weather so hot nobody ever cried because the tears would evaporate the instant they met the air. But instead I step off the porch and yelp with pain; the red sand is ice, the breeze is freezer air. I exhale and a cloud of dragon breath escapes my mouth, misty and cloudy.
My sweater is resting on my beach chair. Shrugging, I grab it and pull it on over my nude torso. Though the arctic wind still prods uncomfortably at my bare skin, the sweater does a lot to keep me warm. I suddenly realize how quiet the beach is, and looking out the water I notice a whirlpool of fins. Dozens and dozens of grey triangular fins stick up through the water, circling around and around near the coast. The water is as clear as glass, and I can see the sharks circling below. They are featureless – no eyes, no ears, no nose, no fins, not even a mouth – like a torpedo.
Suddenly I’m right in front of them, the water lapping seductively at my toes. I start to step forward, but then realize what I’m doing and shout. My mouth is glued shut, though. I stumble, trying to shift my center of gravity backwards, but the beach is gone. I fall into the water, and look around for the surface. But now that has gone, too, which I know can happen close to the shore. The torpedoes have surrounded me now, circling around like planes in formation. I remember my father telling me that to calm sharks you should sing to them, so I start to hum, “oh, oh, oh, you don’t know you’re beautiful.”
They slow down a bit, the wary predators, but then suddenly I feel a powerful bump from behind, and my entire body clenches.

*****

I jerk awake, shivering. The room is dark and silent, and my alarm clock flashes “12:00” – the power must have gone out at some point. I slowly sit up and ease myself out of bed. The bright red from my “WELCOME TO ALASKA!” sweater are the only swatches of color in my sparse flat. The night paints pure black over the off-white canvas of the empty living room, the nearly empty bedroom, the simple kitchen. I stumble into the bathroom without turning on the light, and grab a glass from the medicine cabinet. I run myself a glass of water, and sip slowly. Soon the shivers subside, and I feel ready to again do battle with the uncertain terror of sleep. I walk back into my room, but pause in the doorway. Perhaps it’s just my blurry, sleep-longing eyes, but my bed isn’t empty. There’s someone sleeping under my covers.
“Hello? Hello?” I squeak, easing forward, reaching for the pepper spray I keep hidden next to my desk.
I feel a burst of wind, cold like freezer air; and I hear a rumbling roar, a mix between a purr of a cat and the growl of a dog.
I’m drowning in glue.
Suddenly, abruptly, the figure sits up, and I drop the glass of water with a crash like a gunshot.

*****

I jerk awake, shivering. The room is dark and silent, and my alarm clock flashes “12:00” – the power must have gone out at some point. I slowly sit up and ease myself out of bed. The bright red from my “WELCOME TO ALASKA!” sweater are the only swatches of color in my sparse flat. The night paints pure black over the off-white canvas of the empty living room, the nearly empty bedroom, the simple kitchen. I stumble into the bathroom without turning on the light, and grab a glass from the medicine cabinet. I hear the light tap-tapping of scurrying feet, and turn around slowly. I see only the dark smoke of night engulfing the hall.
“Hello?” I squeak.
It might be a reflection of light from the glass I’m holding, but I shriek as I notice two red eyes appear, for just a moment, gazing out of the darkness.
I close my eyes, begging my brain to wake me up. I pinch myself. I do all this, offer up a desperate prayer to whoever might be listening, and open my eyes.
The red specks of glistening light are gone. I sigh.
I feel a tap on my shoulder, and I drop the glass with a crash like a gunshot.

*****

I jerk awake, shivering. The room is dark and silent, and my alarm clock flashes “12:00” – the power must have gone out at some point. I slowly sit up and ease myself out of bed.

*****

I jerk awake, shivering. The room is dark and silent.

*****

I jerk awake, shivering.

*****

I open my eyelids, and shut them quickly. I’ve been blinded by white. I slowly begin to open them again, and gradually flood my eyes with the biting white glow of day. As soon as I can see, I sit up and exhale, grateful the night is finally over.
A realization strikes me, and I sit up straight in bed. I look down, and find I’m only wearing the thin white nightgown I bought two weeks ago. At least with the sweater gone, it’s much more likely that I’m awake. I still tread cautiously, though, as if over hot coals, knowing that at any moment I could wake up again.
I stumble over to my laptop, praying that I’ll have a reason not to go into work that day. I check my email, but no such luck: it would seem Kathy, my boss, still wants me to start back up again today as we’d agreed; I have no email saying otherwise. I mumble, “dammit,” and slap my laptop shut. I look around my bedroom, hands on my hips, trying to build up the mental energy to begin getting ready for work. My bed sits against the back wall next to the cracked window, sheets ruffled and tossed around haphazardly, betraying my difficult night. My chocolate-milk colored desk is desperately in need of dusting – it would be a shame to see the one splash of color in this room of white walls and grey carpet fade to the dirty greys of dust and apathy. Even the single picture I have on my wall is black and white: a faded family picture from years ago, back before the fire, with my slightly chubby figure snuggled in-between my father and my boyfriend, blanketed by the two men and a fading, tacky sweater that reads “WELCOME TO ALASKA!,” snagged from my grandmother’s attic after her funeral. The edges of the picture still have a bit of ash attached to them in its singed corners. For whatever reason we’d had it developed in black and white, perhaps we thought it looked “cool,” but now it just adds to the monotony of my unfurnished new flat.
I run my finger over the three things I loved; I run my finger over three things I’ll never see again but in dream.
I go to get dressed, desperately searching my sparse closet for something warm to wear on this unseasonably cold October day, something appropriate for a grieving young woman on her first day back at work. It’s a futile search, and in the end I settle on a simple t-shirt and jeans. The warmest extra layer I can find is a thin rain jacket I picked up at Goodwill last week, an ugly lemon-yellow thing I never bothered to wash.
Minutes later I step out the front door and cut my way through the freezing air as well as I can.
The cold breeze claws at my skin. I can do nothing to stop it.

Winner for Feb 12th to 22nd -- Samantha Anne
Prompt -- Coffee


Teabaggers

“D’ya have the stuff?” asked Murray. He and a man in a wide-brimmed hat were sitting at a table in the darkest corner of the dimly-lit saloon. There were several other people in the saloon: twelve rowdy men and women taking shots, three figures hunched over mugs at the bar, four serving girls balancing trays on their shoulders, and a boy plunking away at the ancient piano. The bartender was wiping down the counter, his tattoos rippling as he moved his thick forearms: a steaming mug tattooed on one, and JAVA and a pile of coffee beans inked onto the other.

“O’ course. Question is, do ya ‘ave me money?” The wide-brimmed hat hid most of the stranger’s face, but Murray could see his grin, with two gold teeth glimmering at the corners like fangs.

“Here it is.” Murray slid a stack of cash towards him, hidden behind their drinks. The man slid a small bag across at the same time. Murray loosened the mouth of the bag, and a quick whaft of a deep, earthy scent sidled up to their noses. Murray grinned to himself.

The man turned the bottom of his mug up and glugged down the contents. Then he spat in a corner. “Gah, I can barely stand that stuff. Careful where you go openin’ that sack, boy.” He rushed out and left Murray to take the bill.

“Damn old geezer,” Murray muttered. He counted out his meager reserves of change and left some on the table. Then he got up and began to make his way out, skirting the crowds as best he could. The scent of coffee was thick in the air, from the shots of espresso passed around to the pair of cappuccinos he and the man had been drinking.

Murray was clutching the bag in his hand. Don’t drop it, don’t drop it, whatever you do, don’t drop this one thing, he said to himself.

Of course, if he was thinking about it so much, something was bound to go wrong. A very large man, dizzy and hyperactive from the caffeine, ran into Murray’s shoulder. “Oop! Sorry, brother,” he chuckled.

Murray could only release a strangled, desperate cry. He cursed his own stupidity. Pockets. He had pockets, for God’s sake, why hadn’t he used them?

It was too late for all that. The bag had fallen to the ground, and tiny, shriveled black leaves were scattered over the floor.

The bartender leaped to attention. “Grab ‘im!” he shouted, and two beefy men, twins from the looks of it, took either side of him. This prevented Murray's hasty escape, reluctant as he was to leave behind his wealth.

The bartender put a towel over his hand and scooped up some of the dried leaves. He rubbed them between his fingers, and they crumbled. The bartender brought the leaves to his nose, and his expression darkened. “Tea leaves.”

The saloon let out a collective gasp, though the two men holding Murray didn’t flinch. It had gone so silent you could hear a pin drop. That is, if anyone thought to drop a pin. As it happened, they were too busy watching the spectacle unfold.

“I didn’t expect this from ya, Murray. Don’t ya have anythin’ to say fer yerself?” the bartender glowered at him with bloodshot eyes and teeth stained brown from years of coffee.

“I ain’t got nothin’ to say to ya,” Murray growled, struggling against his guards.

“I’m sorry, son, but I’m gonna have to report ya to the sheriff. Maybe ya can still save yer skin, if she listens to yer story,” the bartender said, and advanced on Murray.

However, before the bartender could reach him, the two walls of muscle at either side got a hand under each of Murray’s elbows, lifted him off the floor neatly, and the two of them carried him out the swinging doors before anyone in the saloon realized what was going on.

“Yer timin’s as terrible as ever!” Murray shouted, having been set on the ground to keep up with the two identical men.

“We know wha’ we’re doin’,” said the one recognizable from the patch over his eye.

“Wha’ about you? You’s the one who spilled the damn tea all over the floor!” grumbled the one with the beard.

As they ran, the trio kicked up clouds of rusty dust. The people from the saloon had regained their senses enough to chase after the teabaggers, and were yelling bloody murder as their boots pounded the parched ground.

The three men ducked into an alleyway then, and under a hidden doorway to the bustling, secretive black tea market.

Winner for March 4th-14th - Yue
Prompt - Masks

How many masks do you have?

More than I can count on my fingers. One for my friends, the other for my parents. Acquaintances, neighbors, teachers. Close friends, sort-of friends, and my enemies.

I am a single person, occupied by an infinite number of personalities.

I don't know who I am anymore.

I am a girl. Then I'm an athlete. I'm a musician. After, I will be a reader.

Tomorrow, I will be your best friend. I will be your mortal enemy. I will be your background character. I will play the lead roles, and then the supporting actors. I will be nothing but a blur behind the busy scenes.

Sometimes, I feel like I lose myself. Then, I don't know if I ever found myself. Does myself even exist? Or am I just a multitude of masks, worn by a single dummy?

I am pages in a book. Words, waiting to be filled. Today, those three words are who am I? I am hatred. I am love. I am everything in between. Is there honestly one answer to that question?

One day I will fill all the pages of my book. Maybe one day it'll even be read by someone else. But no matter how many words I will leave behind, I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to answer.

Who am I?

Winner for March 15th-25 - Sevania
Prompt - Aurora Awakes by John Mackey

Little lives, little world, little known, and yet so much that could be.

Sometimes we think we have come so far. Then we despair when we see our tiny little increment of progress, that baby step made of nothing that won't ever matter in the grand scheme of the Universe.

But it does matter.

Darkness comes in many colors: Midnight blue, shining onyx, dull slate. An empty chalkboard, a monster's lair, the theater just after the curtain falls.

Scattered: (adj.) Without orderly continuity

Help, help, I'm falling, falling, falling through the darkness. The monster's lair.

Help, help, I'm drowning in endless possibility.

At night, borders blur. Colors smooth out into one darkness. Dreams are made and dreams are destroyed. Towers fall, but they could easily be the styrofoam blocks you played with in kindergarten, reaching higher and higher until they dissolved the ceiling and swirled among the stars. At night, there are stars.

Mistakes. "An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it." John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Errors, mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Nobody's perfect.

-"Your eyes, your face, your hands, everything about you is perfect."- So say the lovers, the dancers, the keepers, the laughers. "I love you." So say the dreamers.

Dreams, hopes, ambitions, goals, aspirations, inspirations, more and more and more.

Help, help, I'm flying among the stars. How do I get down?

I am unique. I am different. I am my own person. I am me. If I am one in a million, does that mean there are seven thousand others just like me?

I used to soar, but now I'm stuck in the monster's lair.

We mourn for our fallen expectations. We cry and pull out our hair over our incompetency. We don't matter, we say. But we do.

At night, there are many stars, more than seven thousand stars. We dance in the starlight.

In the day, there is one bright, hopeful star.

Winner for March 26th-April 20 - Emily
Prompt - Pop Music

I hate pop music.

Everywhere I go, it’s pop. Blaring electronic mumble-jumble, obnoxious drum beats that repeat over and over again, and that god-awful auto tune that somehow makes the worst of the singers the most popular. At the pool, girls are singing as loud as they can from the lazy river lyrics from the song the radio station plays twelve times a day.

It’s always confused me why every song is about heartbreak and then hooking up with somebody else. Didn’t you say you’d be together forever in that last song? Didn’t you say you’d remain single for the rest of your life?

I pushed my glasses onto my face as I stood at the side of the dance, watching twirling designs on the floor. The place I occupied was an area where the seizure-inducing lights didn’t touch. My parents had forced me to go; something about making friends, I think. I sighed impatiently, ears hurting from the cranked bass and screeching that was apparently singing. Rummaging through my pocket, I found the tiny emergency flashlight I kept incase of an unexpected blackout. Although the light was small, it provided enough light for the book I had smuggled in. I sat in a chair, shining the flashlight over the words.

“Hi.”

The voice was barely audible. I looked up from my book, seeing a girl in front of me. “Oh, hi Lauren,” I said back.

She looked down at my book, her lips parting slightly. I studied her, observing she had dressed up some. Her hair had been straightened, whereas at school they hung down in semi-curls. Her lips were a brighter red than usual, and it was obvious she was wearing more mascara. She was wearing a purple dress that hugged the curve of her hips, ending a few inches above the knee. A black jacket was on top of her shoulders.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

I closed the book, keeping my finger in the spot where I was reading. “The Rise of the Third Reich,” I told her.

“Hitler?” she asked, cocking an eye brow.

I nodded, opening it up again. I swear to God, if she asks me if I hate Jews—

“That’s interesting.”

I looked up at her, a tad bit surprised. “Really?”

She nodded. “History’s cool.”

“Do you really think that?” I closed the book again.

Nodding again, she said, “You’re really into it, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” My face broke into a lopsided smile. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“That’s really cool.” Her eyes drifted from the book to mine. “Mind of I sit by you?”

“Sure.”

She took a seat by me, the music changing to some One Direction song. The girls started screaming, causing me to wince. Her expression didn’t change.

“I wish I knew more about history,” she sighed. “I just never find the time to read about it.”

“I—I could tell you if you want,” I said. “I’m better at 20th century history, but I can tell you about stuff before that.”

She smiled, her fingers playing with her hair. “That would be nice.”

I ran my fingers through my hair now, looking out on the dance floor. The cacophony of female voices filled the room.

“What parts of 20th century history?”

I looked back over at her. “World War I, World War II, Korean War, Russian Revolution, so on.” I shrugged. “That sort of stuff.”

A small smile was on her lips. “When do you think you could tell me?”

“Anytime you want.”

“Can I have your number then?” she asked.

Taken aback, I stuttered, “I—um, uh—sure.” I gave a nervous laugh, pulling my phone out of my pocket. She already had hers in hand, contacts list open. “I’m 555-7284.”

She typed quickly, saving it. “I’ll send you a text,” she said, swiftly doing so. I noticed how glossy her fingernails were, wondering how she kept them so nice. Soon my phone buzzed. The message read Hi Patrick. :)

I grinned, adding her name to my contact list, my fingers clumsier than hers.

The song changed to something I didn’t know the name of. She looked up at me, her eyes shy. “Do you want to dance?”

I listened to the song. I felt a tad bit uneasy at the slowness. “I’m not too good at dancing.” I gave an apologetic smile.

She gave me a smile back, standing up. “It’s easy, I promise.” She took my hand, pulling me out of my seat. “Put your hands on my shoulders,” she instructed. She did the same thing. “Now just move side to side.”

“Like this?” I awkwardly shifted my weight back and forth.

She nodded, her eyes glittering. “It isn’t exactly rocket science.”

“That’s what I’m used too,” I mumbled.

She apparently heard me, light laughter coming from her. I had to smile at her, her happiness contagious. “You have a nice laugh,” I told her.

She gave me a bashful look. “Thanks.”

We spent the rest of the song silent. The next song that came on was upbeat. “I love this song!” she said, bouncing on her feet and rocking back and forth. She saw my unease. “Come on!” she said, grabbing my hands and swinging them back and forth. I eventually gave in, even smiling as the song went on. Soon we were laughing, dancing wildly to every song, trying to catch our breath during slow ones.

As the dance ended, she looked at me. “I like you,” she said. “We should talk more.”

“We should,” I said, grinning widely.

Okay, maybe I like some pop music….