Fall 2011 Challenge Entry #6

From Bonnie Gorshe (Beaverton)

As she opened the kitchen door the shriek of cicadas pierced her eardrums like darning needles. You could hear them inside but not like this. He’d built a solid house. She’d give him that. She pulled a few grocery bags filled with what was left of her life out to the screen porch where they would be ready to go the minute the taxi came.

She wanted the driver to hurry up. She was never left alone for long. Her eyes grew weary of searching the road, so she looked around the sad garden she’d tried to start. The poor fuchsia had died immediately, its pink dancing girls withering from disappointment.

They’d met in a body shop where she was getting a fender straightened and he was putting a hoist on his jeep. He was a quiet man, but attentive. As an ordinary looking girl she loved being told her face was like an angel, her neck like a swan. His words sounded like lyrics from a corny old song but she found it endearing. “In my house on the prairie a body can be free. I’ll take care of you. Just the two of us.”

And it was just the two of them, day after day after day, in a house filled with guns and supplies to last a decade. They were surviving a war that wasn’t happening. The man she had married wasn’t just quiet, he was paranoid. This life was going to smother her.

A plume of dust announced a car coming down their road. She gathered her grocery bags. But it wasn’t the taxi, it was his jeep. She ran the bags back into the house and hid them, then phoned to cancel her ride. He would leave again in about a month. She would wait.

Fall 2011 Challenge Entry #5

From Michael Fairchild (member, Westside Wrtiers)

A KILLER, A COP, AND A CORPSE GO INTO A BAR

State Police Captain Lars Howard held the door of The Old Town Bar and Grill while two men carried in a third, blood oozing from a gaping wound. "Put the body there and screen it," he ordered.

"He was Robert, I'm Michael, this is Allen," one of the carriers said.

"Explain your relationship," growled Lars.

"We are, were, partners. He was unloading our moving van in front of our new store, The Fuchsia Swan," Michael said. "I was in the back of the shop, and ran out when I heard the shot. Allen was down the street getting us lunch."

"Where were you? And did you hear the shot?" Lars asked Allen.

"I'm too upset to drink anything," he answered.

"He must have heard it, we met at the back of the truck," Michael added. "Robert had been unloading his gun collection. He was paranoid about moving to a small town. Afraid some hillbilly would break in at night and smother him in his sleep, or shoot him in the back."

"I don't think his mother will care that he's dead," Allen said. "She didn't like him any more than we did. He was ruining our shop before we even got a chance to open it."

Toby, the owner of The Old Town Bar, inserted a napkin into the Agatha Christy he'd been reading. "Captain Howard, I suggest you place Allen under arrest," he said.

Later that evening, having handed the case, complete with confession, on to the district attorney; Lars Howard returned to the Old Town Bar for an off-duty beer and a plate of fried clams. "It was elementary," Toby said. "Allen answered the questions incorrectly, showing that he was temporarily deafened from discharging the weapon within the confines of the truck."

New Issue of Washington County Review Out

Read it online.

Fall 2011 Challenge Entry #4

From Whitney Zeigler (member, Westside Writers)

She just had to know.

No, she didn’t, she told herself. She couldn’t click on his profile because the temptation to contact him would be too great.

Her hand clutched the mouse in a death grip; her finger hovered over the right click button.

“Gah!” she groaned and rested her forehead against the cool LED screen. I’m an idiot for even considering it! What am I thinking? Her right index finger dipped ever so slightly toward the button, then jerked away as if seared.

She was dying to know what he looked like now and whether he was married. Paranoid, she wondered if he’d already checked out her profile and knew everything about her, even the name of her cat, Fluffers. She would just peek, she told herself.

No, you are happily married, she scolded herself. But it doesn’t hurt to look…see what you’re not missing out on. Her face turned fuchsia as she recalled their last night together. They’d eaten dinner at their favorite restaurant, a French bistro called The Swan. After imbibing a bottle of cheap wine, fortified with only appetizers because they couldn’t afford an entrée, they’d lurched around the corner to his apartment.

She closed her eyes and sighed, remembering his tickling touch that raised goose bumps on her arms. Their bodies illuminated by moonlight from the skylight above. The slow, awkward start to their love making spiraling into a desperate grab for flesh. The need to consume one another after years of tortured friendship.

Afterward, she had counted the number of stars in the Big Dipper to ease her feelings of giddiness. Crushing her fist to her mouth, she had smothered a giggle. And then with a few words, he had smashed her bliss to bits.

Her finger trembled over the mouse.

Fall 2011 Challenge Entry #3

The Swan and the Lake - By April Whidden (member, Westside Writers)

Carlton took one final glance at the fog-covered lake, screening his chest against the wind with one hand and tossing his partly smoked Winston into the water with the other. The lake was dead. Not a single life form took refuge there. Haunted, some said. Most likely by the ghosts of loose women, he thought. A rare smile snaked its away across his gaunt face, pulling at his jaws so tightly it hurt.

“Penelope will feel right at home here.” Carlton shivered as he remembered her perfect body turning from alabaster, to fuchsia, and finally blue as she succumbed to the smothering. “Good bye, darling.” he said, fingering the flask in his pocket that would soon erase her memory.

As he turned he was startled by a sound: a wailing, low and sweet as a baby’s coo. Carlton turned back to see something emerge from the waters, a small, white image against the murky backdrop. It slithered, winding its way forward yet causing no ripples, until it rested at his feet.

Is that a…? Carlton blinked and looked again. Sure enough, perched by his bare toes was a beautiful swan.

Where had it come from? Carlton raised his eyes above him, then lowered them to the ground for a hint as to its origin. His teeth chattered but the wind had subsided.

The swan stood, shaking water from its feet and Carlton heard the jingling of a collar around its neck. It was a pet. Of course! He had only been paranoid. Carlton wiped the sweat from his brow and stooped to give the bird a pat.

The soft wailing returned, blanketing Carlton. It was the last thing he heard. Both his hand and his heart stopped cold as he read the lone word etched into the swan’s collar:

Penelope.