Author: Summer Writing Contest

Honorable Discharge

August 4, 2017 by Summer Writing Contest 2017 Summer Writing Contest, Drama, Historical Fiction, Hot 0 Comments

Any man who says they can survive the Black Hills in January for more’n three weeks is either a liar or a Lakota Sioux. I was neither. One look at my war-torn face told my story. I was a survivor. After two wars and a stint in the U.S. Cavalry, I figured I could survive a South Dakota winter. Three icy weeks in the Hills changed my mind.

Fortunately, the roan I’d bought in Rapid City knew her way home, even in the dark. The sounds from the saloon led me the rest of the way. No surprise to find the tavern bustin’ at the seams. When the snows start fallin’, most folks just hunker down and drink ‘til spring. ‘Course the biggest problem with a full saloon in a gold-rush town was the high odds of findin’ trouble, ‘specially the kinda trouble I wasn’t lookin’ for.

The trouble I was huntin’ came in the form of my former commanding officer, Colonel Hamilton Gresham, Commander of Company E, 7th U.S. Cavalry, retired. Latest word had him headed west with his new company of killers to make his mark on the world. After Company E’s actions at Wounded Knee, I knew his mark would be made in Lakota blood. I aimed to stop him, along with my nightmares.

The Speech

August 3, 2017 by Summer Writing Contest 2017 Summer Writing Contest, Drama, Hot 0 Comments

The United States of cunting America just fucking tried to kill the fucking Prime Minister of cunting Australia you CUNTS.

Zac highlighted the sentence and tapped delete.

Citizens of Australia, I speak to you tonight at a crossroads for humanity. The story of man is boundless, but taking a long enough view, one can identify seismic turning points. I believe future observers will label this such a moment.

He sat back in his chair and into the storm that had swept through the vaults under Parliament House. Bodies swirled around him, a stream brushing and bumping at his elbows, voices entangled in a panicked hum. He took a breath and focused again on the keys.

Our intelligence services have uncovered, and averted, an attack on my life. The planned assassination of your Prime Minister. More disturbing still, they have provided me with evidence enough that I can say to you now, with great confidence, that this act of war was perpetrated not by a traditional foe, but an ally—The United States of America.

The Melting Pot

August 2, 2017 by Summer Writing Contest 2017 Summer Writing Contest, Drama, Hot 1 Comment

“Is it okay to ask how you got those burns?” he asks as he places a pint in front of me. Hot dogs come to boil in a battered stock pot behind the bar, permeating the stale air with the odor of cooked meat.

He seems interested, but I know the type. If I told him the story, he’d go on about that one friend in middle school who was burned in an accident. The question always ends up being a vehicle for their stories, and that’s fine.

He means well. Bartenders always do. They are better than shrinks; once they realize I’m not in the talking mood, they back off. There’s a kindness in being left alone.

He looks like he wants to press the issue. It must be the start of his shift; not one noticeable beer stain and his hair is combed just so. This is likely his first conversation of the day. He stirs the pot. I wonder when it was last cleaned.

“It’s fine, man,” I start. “It happened in Iraq.”

Candy Run

August 1, 2017 by Summer Writing Contest 2017 Summer Writing Contest, Drama, Thriller/Suspense 0 Comments

Marcus closed the door to the small brown Mazda and pressed the button on the keychain to lock it. He moved to the other side of the car next to the boy and they began walking across the dark parking lot.

“What are you gonna get?”

The boy’s face grew serious.

“Not sure.”

“Well you better make up your mind. We need to get home.”

“Probably some Mike and Ikes.”

“Really?”

“Maybe.”

“I just think there’s way better choices.”

Chester

July 28, 2017 by Summer Writing Contest 2017 Summer Writing Contest, Drama, Speculative Fiction 0 Comments

By the end, I wanted to believe him, although it really doesn’t matter.

He was simply one of my best friends, Chester A. Arthur, and we met at a small community college in the spring of 1972, near Richmond.

We were then both largely adrift. My early story was unexceptional, in a kind of stylish Sixties way, dropping out of Middlebury a few years earlier. Odd jobs along a Southern arc, coupled with an interest in history, finally landed me in the Capital of the Old Confederacy.

That’s where I met Chester, both of us finding seats in the back row of HIST. 203, THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT.

The Better Part of Valor

July 26, 2017 by Summer Writing Contest 2017 Summer Writing Contest, Drama, Hot 2 Comments

Nobody ever walks into a dive like this. It’s the kind of hole to steer clear of, unless it’s the only beacon in your stretch of inky night, a slice of flotsam, a quivering straw.

Unless you’ve got nothing left to lose.

Mark Crandall felt the sawdust underfoot, damp with spilled beer, matted and caking the treads of his combat sneakers, his fighting shoes. Their cracked leather tops sported crusty brown splotches from bloodied noses and split lips. The buzz of impact still echoed in his bones, but it hadn’t been enough. Nothing was ever enough.

He straddled a barstool, swiping a jacket sleeve over the pitted surface in front of him, sweeping away peanut shells, obliterating the oily, wet circles overlapping like an Olympic icon. Clearing the slate.

Whatever Happened to Jeremy Mankin?

July 25, 2017 by Summer Writing Contest Drama, Fantasy, Hot, Magical Realism 1 Comment

Everyone in Whispering Harbor knew that Jeremy Mankin wasn’t fishing with the sharpest hook.

“I heard him mumbling the strangest things,” Judith Matchbox said after finding Jeremy in her vegetable patch. “When I caught him, he was covered in dirt and going on about some damned magical creature. That boy better replace my carrots.”

“He chases things that don’t exist,” the girls in his classes would gossip. “Nobody likes him.” Their words reached the ladies at the salons where it was discussed alongside the latest news.

But it was Frank Toastmaster’s account that the town considered gospel. “Don’t blame the boy,” he once whispered at a Rotary meeting. “Blame the mother.”

Mrs. Mankin wasn’t one for enduring insults. She got Jeremy a job packing groceries at the local market, and then ran over Frank Toastmaster’s mailbox with her car.

Subject 34

July 21, 2017 by Summer Writing Contest 2017 Summer Writing Contest, Drama, Hot, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction 0 Comments

“How are you feeling today, Mr. President?”

Subject 34 ignores my question, continuing to focus on the playing cards in front of him. It’s been four weeks since his file dropped into my inbox. Conversations with 34 are rare, but he has slowly warmed to my presence. Every week I look at body language, eye movement. I study. I observe.

Despite his unwillingness to answer most of my questions, 34 is my favorite patient so far. He’s better than Subject 27, who lumbered around the room yelling, or 7, who took one look at my dark skin and refused to speak to me. Prejudice, it seems, lasts beyond the grave.

I look down at my tablet. It has my name, Dr. Roman Bell, printed at the top along with 34’s initials—D.D.E.—scribbled in the corner. Once the subjects are approved by a psychiatrist, they are moved out of the clinic area and are prepared to go out into the world. They are eventually given new identities, so we call them by their numbers instead of their original names.

I can hear the news blaring from the television in the hallway, reporting the third assassination this week. The government is falling, and this project—Project 1776—is the proposed solution.