The first “Just F*cking Write Something!” Story Contest is over and the results are in.
Which stories made the top? Read on to find out!
During the last stream, we held a vote to decide the winners of the 1st “Just F*cking Write Something!” Story Contest. The prompt was “an unlikely duo.”
True to its name, the contest was all about just getting a story on the page. And with 20 entries and a ton of awesome stories, I’d say it was super successful at doing that!
Abbey and I cut the submissions down to the top six, and then we read all six stories live on stream. Chat then voted on the winners, with the top three getting cash prizes, and the others getting cool prizes too.
Here are the winners:
- “Hear You, Hear You” by SIXSIXseve_n (Fantasy)
- “Euphoria” by insrtwittyname (Magical realism)
- “The Lumberjack Duelist” by JebusDota (Western)
- “The Sky and Me” by shadowflames (Literary)
- “Coconut in Cherry Sauce” by ducktoot (Dark humor)
- “Janitor and the Blob” by Rzb125 (Absurd)
Scroll down to read their stories:
#1. “Hear You, Hear You” by SIXSIXseve_n
Flaisch gnashed his needle-like teeth, basking in the warm air that pulsed through the chasm. He rubbed the cracked skin of his fingers, yellowed flakes drifting to the soil near his bare feet. He’d come from the lower levels of the tunnels to investigate intruders. Someone had fallen into the pits from the above world. From the before place.
The Deep breathes life and death, they always said. It exhales the souls of those who pass into the Celestial Realm. It releases tepid wind from below, flinging souls into the upper tunnel-ways.
Flaisch continued his ascension, light beaming from several spots of the above world. He felt One with the soil. One with the Deep. One with the Family of Palefolk who inhabited these tunnels. He never wanted to escape into the above world, as so many whispered.
The intruders were said to have fallen east of the barracks. It was Flaisch’s job to make sure they had died from their fall into the pit. Or that they had broken enough bones for the tunnels to swallow their flesh, leaving only bits of ivory protruding from the ground.
Flaisch wasn’t sure why he’d been sent on this particular job. When an intruder was reported, one of the Family from an adjacent region would be assigned to the duty. To be sent from the southern tunnels, all the way to the eastern ridge, was odd. But despite his questions, Phillia had assured him that this job was Flaisch’s to take.
Two other Palefolk had come along; Petriesch, an older folk whom Flaisch knew to be quiet, and Phillia, a younger folk with a razor-like tongue. She had been the one to give the orders.
“Four marks northward, seven marks east,” Flaisch mumbled, his voice like steel on stone. Saliva dripped from his jaw.
“Six marks northward, you scab,” Phillia hissed.
Flaisch looked back to see her trailing behind. She grinned, baring teeth like knives.
“You said four marks northward last time,” Flaisch said. “Petriesch, you heard her.”
The old folk scratched his head, sending skin flakes about him in a cloud. “If she say six marks, she say six marks, hear you.”
Flaisch sighed. He swore Phillia had told him four. He’d repeated it in his head a hundred times.
“Do you need me to lead?” Phillia suggested. “If you can’t keep your wits, maybe you should leave the navigation to me.”
Flaisch chuckled. “You? Leader?”
Phillia sneered, keeping her gaze to the ground.
Flaisch begrudgingly continued onward.
The sooner he could find the location of the intruders, the sooner he could find a tavern and some mud beer. This far east, they probably even served carp. The notion of feasting on such delicious flesh filled his mouth with spit. It dribbled onto the dry, cracked skin of his chest and belly.
The group passed an enormous archway cut into stone. More archways lined the path, extending far into the pit below and high above. An endless number existed in the tunnels. None of the Palefolk knew their purpose. None knew how long they’d stood. But they helped with navigation.
“Five marks northward, seven marks east,” Flaisch said.
Each archway counted as one mark. They would enter the sixth, and then travel seven more east. There they would find the remains of the fallen intruders.
“Can you hold on, there, hear me?” Petriesch called. “I needs just a moment of breaths.”
Flaisch sighed and leaned against cold stone. “Hurry up, will you. I want to get to a tavern this night.”
“Excuse me?” Phillia said. “No taverns on assignment. I’ll have you know, my cousin works for the Chief. He–”
“Oh, shut it, will you?” Flaisch said. “Once we’ve found the intruders, our job is done. You can go skin the peel of a potato for all I care. I’m finding myself some mud beer.”
Phillia glared.
“I think I’ll join you, young’in,” Petriesch said with a toothy smile. “I heard they serve carp out east.”
“You read my mind,” Flaisch said. “Then let’s go.”
They passed four more archways. The stone structures spiraled round, eternally upward. Mushrooms with orange caps grew in patches between cracks in the ground. Bats fluttering their wings echoed about. Their screeches pierced the air. Finally, they reached the fifth mark.
Flaisch could hear Petriesch struggling to breath from the strenuous walk, but when he turned around, Phillia was nowhere to be seen.
“Phillia?” Flaisch called out. “Petriesch where did she go?”
“I…” The old folk paused, one finger scratching his flaking temple. “I was too tired to look at anything but my feet, sorry to say it. I say we would have heard her if she slipped and fell, hear you?”
Flaisch screamed her name, this time so loud that he spooked an entire colony of bats. They shrieked and dove in a whirlwind of black velvety wings.
“Curses,” Flaisch said. “Do we go back to look for her?”
“Brine wash and thickleseed,” Petriesch said dismissively. “She went off on her own, I say. She can find her way back to us, hear you. We have mud beer to drink. We have carp to eat.”
It didn’t make sense for Phillia to run off on her own. When a group of Palefolk are assigned to a scouting mission, they are to stick together. They are Family.
Flaisch rubbed his eyes. “She is one of the Family. Although, she was rather annoying. I suppose…”
Petriesch waved his hands in front of him. “Salamander through and through, that one. She is on her own, hear you. Family or not. The taverns, young’in.”
Rage boiling in his gut, Flaisch licked his drooling lips. He ran his tongue along each of his sharp teeth. He clicked the pointed ends of his fingernails together. “Onward.”
Petriesch gave a knowing look.
The two of them traveled eastward for seven marks. Flaisch couldn’t help but look back after each archway, hoping that Phillia would show up. If she didn’t return to the Hollow, Flaisch would have some explaining to do. He ran through a gambit of excuses for why she wouldn’t make it back with the two of them.
But before Flaisch could settle on which explanation would bring about the least amount of questioning, they had arrived.
The tunnel in which the intruders had fallen lay before them. It extended for only a short distance, with a bright beam of light at the far end revealing a pool of brown water. Once inside of the narrow tunnel, Flaisch could feel the presence of the Deep. The walls pulled inward around him with a sharp breath, then outward, exhaling sweltering wind.
Petriesch followed closely behind, only a few paces away.
They drew closer to the brightness of over world light. Solid dirt turned to mud and pools of stinking water. The cool of it refreshed Flaisch, reaching up to the fissured skin of his calves.
Water splashed from a pool ahead.
Flaisch’s heart pummeled his ribs. He hurdled backward, knocking Petriesch down.
“Thistleweeding–” Petriesch snapped.
A figure twice as tall as any Palefolk stood beneath the beam of above world light. It spit up water, unaware of the two scrambling in the mud before it. It wore leather over its body. Long strands of wet hair stuck to the sides of its head. It wore bones on a belt around its waist. It was…a human.
The intruder had survived. Unbelievable. Flaisch’s mouth dried. He had been trained for this. He knew exactly what to do. But as soon as he searched his frantic mind for the training he had undergone, he came up blank.
“Carp and mud beer.” Phillia appeared just behind the monstrous human. She grinned, her needle teeth gleaming. “This one is yours,” she told the human. Her sharp finger nail pointed at Flaisch.
“I-It…” Flaisch couldn’t speak no matter how hard he tried. “Wh-Wha…”
The human pulled from its belt a curved blade. “Thank you, little one,” it said with a voice like trembling earth. It trudged forward, and climbed from the pool of water. Its eyes twinkled bright blue from beneath its dark hair.
Flaisch managed to stand up and clamber back. But an arm caught hold of him and held him fast.
Petriesch. The old folk gripped Flaisch firm and held him to the ground. “Just wait patiently, hear you. It’s for your own good, hear you.”
A spark of realization took Flaisch. The strange assignment for him to be sent east. The disappearance of Phillia. “You and Phillia. You brought me here to die? Together?”
Petriesch spat into a pool of muddy water. He dug his sharp nails into Flaisch’s cracked skin. “Just sit still, hear you.”
The hulking human figure stumbled forward, curved blade raised to the air.
Without another option, Flaisch bit deep into the arm of the old folk. He tore easily through the flesh of Petriesch. Pungent iron liquid filled his mouth as blood spilled from the wound. This allowed him to break free.
Flaisch ran out of the tunnel, but the human closed in quick. Water splashed with each step. The human leapt behind him, closing the distance with ease.
A sudden sting along his shoulder sent Flaisch writhing to the ground. The human had nearly cut off Flaisch’s entire arm with a single blow.
Phillia walked into view. Flaisch could have never guessed that the two of them were in on something devious. They didn’t so much as glance at each other the entire trip. “Why?” Flaisch cried out as his vision blurred with tears. “Why are you doing this?”
The human set its blade onto its shoulder. It gripped a hefty glass jar in its left hand, and bent low, collecting blood from Flaisch’s wound. “Magick,” the human said. Its eyes glowed blue in the darkness.
“The human promised me escape,” Phillia said. “In exchange for Palefolk blood.”
Flaisch’s shoulder throbbed. “Escape?”
“The human will take me to the above world. The before place,” Phillia said.
The human laughed. Its jar had filled to its brim with sanguine liquid. It stood and wrapped the lid of the glass. “You cannot step foot above. Look at you. What a foolish halfling.”
Phillia’s eyes widened. “You promised me…”
The human shrugged, then started back toward the end of the tunnel from which it had come. Phillia stood in its way. She glared at the human with vengeful eyes. “Take me with you or…”
“Or what?”
“Die.”
Phillia leapt and grabbed hold of the human’s neck. She ripped its flesh and bit deep into its cheek. The human roared. It threw her as though she weighed that of a tunnel fly. It swung its blade before it, ready to slice Phillia into two.
Flaisch couldn’t believe what was happening. He hadn’t had time to process it all, but found himself on his feet. The intruder was alive. He had to destroy it while it was distracted. It was his only chance.
With his arm bouncing lifelessly at one side, Flaisch vaulted onto the human’s back and opened his jaws wide. He sunk his teeth into the neck of the human, just above its shoulders. The human fell still, and collapsed into the mud, a useless sack of skin. He had remembered his training; sever the neck.
Flaisch’s head felt light. He rested in a pool of brown water, and watched as the blood that had once poured from his shoulder began to coagulated. Grimacing, he ripped the rest of his arm free from the bit of flesh that attached it to his torso. It would grow back eventually.
Phillia moaned. “Why did you save me?”
Closing his eyes, Flaisch breathed deeply. “We are Family.”
The words hung in the air as a tumultuous exhale from the Deep sent hot air whirling around him. He breathed it all in. He felt One with the soil. One with the Deep. One with the Family.
#2. Euphoria by insrtwittyname
The day they find the little girl’s body in the suitcase in the river is the same day the crow speaks to him.
The ‘they’ is not him; he’s trying to study with the TV droning low in the background, using it as whitenoise, but the TV’s a lodestone, magnetising his attention.
The headline and scene appear. A grim plastic-faced woman stands in front of a cordoned-off stretch of river swarming with CSI’s in their white condom suits. The book nearly slips from his hands; he can’t look away but also can’t turn up the TV. They show close-up photos of the suitcase in situ, gory parts censored so the photos are more foggy than clear, and end with a headshot of her at her sixth birthday party, dark eyes large, hair a curved cowl of shadow behind her while she’s turned to face the camera with a gap-toothed smile that’s beatific and terrifyingly joyful.
He superimposes the girl’s smile over the suitcase and thinks how strange, how scary it is, that one can fit in the other. The story goes on for another few minutes, and the girl’s family gives a tearful statement before it cuts back to the newsreader who now has to announce the sport, voice and face glum, fully aware of the awkwardness, the unfairness of the segue.
He turns off the TV and re-finds the page in his book, trying to concentrate on the words now twirling dreamlike and twisted up on themselves like a bundle of fairy floss.
It’s already been one of those days where time seems to skip forward until it’s slipped through your numb fingers. Days at the restaurant aren’t as hard as nights. But it’s still tiring, physical work. His hands perpetually stink of prawn guts, no matter how red-raw he scrubs them: just one of the reasons Lucy cited when she broke up with him a month ago. Lazy in bed. Smells of prawns. Her last text message to him reads: ‘im sorry but its just like fucking a dead sea creature.’ He re-reads it at least once a week, not really because of self-hatred, but just because it’s become a kind of tic. Maybe he’s hoping that one day he’ll check it to see that new messages have appeared, or to find that everything’s been wiped clear, that he’s gone either forward or back in time to some new dimension where everything isn’t so fucked-up and terrible.
The world presses down on him. And, as usual, when things are hard, the itch for nicotine burns insistently in his body.
Grabbing the pack of cigarettes and lighter from his bedside table, he uses the kitchen knife he keeps in his sock drawer to lever open his bedroom flyscreen in sure, practised movements, discarding the screen on the bed then carefully sliding out the glass panes from the antique casement window, stacking them like microfilm plates on the floor. With the extra space, he swings his body up onto the ledge, the sill beneath him still slick from the afternoon rain.
Gripping the top of the window head, slowly, he rises to his feet, balancing on the window sill. To the right, less than two steps away is his goal: the now obsolete crimson-rusted external fire escape that was built before the building’s extension.
Only the landlord has the key to the door leading to the roof. One too many suicides, maybe. But he’d found this route early into his lease, and has used it consistently since his breakup, spurred on after he’d re-read his lease agreement and realised his rooms were meant to be smoking-free. Now, balanced on the window ledge, he looks down. It’s not a tall building, but the seven stories below him seem more than enough. The dark street’s maw yawns open, beckoning him toward oblivion. His vision shifts with slight vertigo, and the maw ripples like it’s speaking unknowable words. Wind gusts, shearing at his skin, and his foot slips on the ledge.
For a moment he feels himself falling and knows he will die and thinks how strange it is he feels so little fear.
But then he’s righted himself somehow, hugging hard against the wall, heartbeat jittering. That’s just his body’s reaction. His mind’s cold. He often feels like he’s sleepwalking, like he’s flatlining every second but can’t get enough electricity, enough volts, to jolt him out of freefall. Now he can cross ‘near-death’ off the list of things that do not work.
Let the adrenaline ebb… deep breaths until the shaking’s stopped… one calm step over to the fire escape and he’s safe and ascending into darkness…
***
It’s cold on the roof but he likes the cold: how it leeches your body and makes you feel like you aren’t really there, like you’re out on a wide expanse of bright ice that at any moment could shudder and take you into its blue depths until you turn blue too and you’re both blue together in cold, dead companionship.
A vent to his left spews steam into the air like a glazier blowing glass. The clove cigarette tastes of fire in his mouth, nose, lungs. The stars glitter coolly above him, glancing off the wet roof tiles.
Looking out at the faint street lights blinking like lethargic fireflies, he tries not to think about the dead girl or the way his stomach felt when his feet almost fell out beneath him, but fails.
The girl’s smile reminds him of the time his father took him to the dog races. He was maybe nine or ten, not allowed in the betting room, but so enamoured by the attendants: their neat little checkered bow-ties and red waistcoats. The eclectic array of characters, the fortunes on display (sickening now) fascinated him: strings of pearls, tattered tan coats, holey sweaters, pale shadows where newly-pawned rings used to encircle.
And then came the dogs. So sleek. Pure muscled tubes of speed almost hovering off the ground in mantles of sandy dust kicked up by the pack. Their skins burned bright in the sunlight like starred chariots, rippling as if halfway between forms, as if their flesh struggled to catch up to their spirits, tongues and teeth fighting to break clear of their latticed muzzled cages. And seemingly the whole world watched: the crowd roared curses, screamed the euphoria of self, the euphoria of the whole human race for having achieved this, for having cruelly leashed flight.
They stayed for two races. After the first, walking to the toilets, they passed an old man shouting, jumping with joy in the middle of the room while people skirted around him, staring at him strangely until they figured out he’d won 100k, and then everything made sense: the silver tears of joy coursing from glass-blue eyes; the smile so wide and shiny, inset into his sunburnt, whiskered face.
After the disappointing, slow, second race, on the way back to the car, they passed the same man, now sitting outside on the kerb, face in his hands. He’d lost it all. The man looked up when he heard their footprints, and his gaunt face, pallid and devoid of hope, without tears, was unforgettable.
Sometimes now if he’s looking in the mirror he’ll see that man’s face instead. It always flashes up at the strangest of times, like an old lucky coin that can never be lost, tucked away in the back pocket of memory, worn smooth from use but still unmistakeable in its image.
A wooshing sound. Click-clacks like tiny pebbles on tiles. A crow hops from foot to foot next to him, wings tucked, sauntering up and down the roof edge, peering into the gutters, maybe searching for snails or worms curled up in the thin damp. Its wings, wet and glossy, shine dark like gunmetal and its eyes are glassy black.
Well, would you look at this, the crow says. I thought I felt sorry for myself, but you’re on a whole other level.
For a long moment the boy just stares at the bird and blinks. A small sound escapes his lips. He stutters.
‘What?’ he asks.
The crow cocks his head. What what? it echoes back, its voice almost tri-tonal: a bird’s cry mixed with iron and bone but speaking human language.
The boy feels more out of control now than when he nearly fell to his death a few minutes ago. ‘Am I going crazy?’
That’s a very personal question. I wouldn’t want to overstep any boundaries. You don’t know me, after all.
‘Have I gone crazy?’
Do you think asking a talking bird is really the best way to go about answering that?
He snort-laughs, just at the absurdity of it all. ‘No, I guess not.’
The crow scratches its face with a taloned claw. Besides, I take offense. How incredibly egotistical, how incredibly human to believe that I must be the figment of your psychosis. Maybe the whole universe is dreamed up by crows. Maybe everything any of you will ever know is just the tip of one bristle in one bird’s wing. The crow caws, the sound low and mocking and sarcastic, and his beak seems almost to be tilted in the hint of a smile. Have you ever considered that?
‘Not especially, no.’
Hmmph. The crow turns away from him in contempt, then glances behind it as if making sure he’s still looking, and begins to groom himself, nudging its gleaming, preening beak beneath his wing.
This is his chance. While the crow isn’t watching, he charges at it with his hand outstretched, hoping to feel what it really is.
The crow glances up almost immediately and leaps awkwardly into flight, wings moving in a flurry that kicks up dust as it tries to get away. Rech! What are you doing!
He chases the crow across the roof, stumbling a few times on the rough surface, clutching only at air as the crow hop-jump-skips almost sideways, weaving and ducking through the air, always out of reach. A feather sifts free from the bird and falls to the ground, and only then the boy finally stops, panting, and gets down on his knees, fumbling with his hands outstretched, searching frantically.
‘I was trying to touch you. To see if you’re real.’
Have you ever heard of this thing called consent? The crow fully alights on the ground a metre or so out of reach, and looks disgruntled, breast feathers ruffled. Besides, what makes your sense of touch so much more grounded in the Real than your sense of hearing?
Finally, the boy scoops up the feather triumphantly, holding its sleek, almost imperceptible, weight in his head, the feather so black it seems to cut even the night. He stares at it, then stands looking out over the roof, spinning it between two fingers.
Well?
‘This complicates things.’
The crow shivers, neck-feathers flaring like a lion’s mane. Its voice is matter-of-fact and hurt. How could I, Crow, not be real?
And then all at once the annoyance seems to drain out of the crow and it’s playful again, hopping forward and back and cawing great laughs that seem to echo upon themselves to then be drained away like a plugless basin being filled with water over and over again. It hops up, perching on the edge of the building so it’s looking him right in the eyes. And now its face is shifting, rippling, and it’s the old man from the dog races staring at him, no, now the little girl, visage flickering between life and death, between euphoria and its opposition.
The boy stumbles back, all at once terrified. ‘What are you?’
Crow spreads its wings. Its eyes, wings, body, are voids of light. I am the true nature of all things.
It crows its name like a broken bell tolling, and takes wing, already lost in wind and darkness. By the time the rain comes, the boy is still alone.
#3. The Lumberjack Duelist by JebusDota
I
Peter laid down his hand, something the other men of Milntown frequently scoffed at. You ‘aven’t seen all the cards yet, spitbrain! Ah, the foolish mistake of minimizing loss. How could Peter have been so stupid? Surely, his ever-growing pile of cash and coin were simply luck. Or perhaps the men had been cursed for not badmouthing their wives yet.
Nothing in the game of chance was certain. Indeed, there is nothing certain. Even in rigged games, there is always a way to win. In poker, which Peter had learned in a town hundreds of miles from Milntown and honed in saloons like this across the yellow-and-brown, scenic-yet-barren continent, one won more money by playing less hands. Five men sit at a table. Yet one of them plays every hand and wins most of them? Nope.
Calculate risk. Maximize profit, minimize loss.
A nomadic lifestyle was more expensive than one would think. Permanent lodging was cheaper in the long term. Horses were expensive to maintain. Towns and villages were often days apart, meaning supplies had to be purchased in excess. A second supply horse would be needed.
Luckily, Peter had never needed to worry about the quantity of money he acquired. No, not luckily. Peter had a lifetime of evidence to prove so. In any case, he was more concerned for the speed at which he made money. “Conman” was this century’s “witch”.
Another hand had been dealt. Peter lifted the corners of his two cards. Ace-king, both hearts. He raised. To no surprise, they all called. The flop came King-9-6, one spade and two clubs, respectively. A man in a maroon suit and trousers raised. Call. Call. Peter raised six times the amount.
The man in maroon sniffed. “Here comes the dragon.” Chuckles from the others, though the man to Peter’s left suddenly hesitated as his hands hoved over his coins. He shook his head.
Folded.
They’re learning, Peter thought as he suppressed a grin. That was a good thing. The most unskilled men, while easily exploited, were wildcards. Let them build confidence in their abilities. Let them think they have you figured out. It was like teaching a child chess. Before they know the fundamentals, their moves appear random—not thought about beforehand. Easy to defeat, though sometimes tedious. After their tents had been built in the neighborhood of the game’s essence, you erect a brick house beside them. And when they built their own brick house, you skip a century and have a skyscraper block out their morning sun.
The next man folded. Call by the raiser with a fondness for maroon clothing. Fold fold. The turn came. 10 of clubs. His opponent checked, downing the last of his whiskey, waving his hand at the bartender. Peter checked, allowing them both see the last card for free.
River: ace of hearts.
Two aces, two kings.
The man in maroon sat in thought as a waitress brought him another tumbler of whiskey. He sipped. “Ah!”
“Well?” Peter asked, running through the hands of cards Maroon could have that would raise at the start then check both the flop and turn
The man silently counted, pointing at the five cards on the table. He checked his cards. His brows furrowed for a second, his mouth twitching in a flash. The last few times he had done this, he was bluffing, betting strong to feign a monster hand. “All in,” he said, shoving twenty-two dollars and change forward. It was more than most here made in a month. Peter raised a brow.
“Call.” Peter nodded to the man, who flipped two-seven, both clubs—among the absolute worst cards in poker to start with. Peter cursed, throwing his cards face-down into the pile of cards and counting out twenty-two dollars and seventy-three cents. The others were laughing, gleeful to finally see more of the wooden table’s top in front of Peter.
What a shitty hand. What a pile of garbage the man in maroon had been dealt! Yet it had won. He had brought a tulip to a sword fight and won.
That’s poker. And it’s why you never brought every dollar to your name to the table. Don’t let downturns and upsets set you sideways. Peter had another two hundred and something locked away in his room at the inn.
The saloon’s doors burst open.
A grizzled man stomped in, slowly making his way through the saloon, glaring at each face. He had a stature that could teach Goliath the words “please” and “thank you”. Each pair of eyes he met turned; downwards, upwards, sideways. Had a plague hit town? The awkward coughs and clearing of throats suggested so.
The beast of man passed Peter’s table. Peter looked away. He hadn’t come to start trouble. Spend a week or two raking up poker money then disappearing. As Peter turned his head to the window, he noticed the man dressed in maroon had left his seat.
Clack. Clack. The massive intruder stopped at Hauler and Digger’s table, both eyeing the stranger with calm intensity. Hauler, dressed in head to toe in white and red, said: “The bartender would be behind the bar. Is that head of yours too—” The stranger took Hauler’s tumbler of whiskey and spat in it. He snorted, hawked, then spat in Digger’s tumbler.
Digger shot up, pistol trained on the stranger. Hauler waved. Digger lowered his gun, heated gaze unfaltered.
“You,” the stranger said. His voice was even deeper than Peter had expected. “Me. Duel.”
Silence.
Silence…
And, oh! The laughter!
A skinny man, who Peter had only now noticed was trailing the stranger a few feet behind, took out a long, clothed object and approached Hauler’s table. A rifle? The laughter fell off a cliff. Peter gripped the gun at his side, as did several others in the saloon. The skinny man pulled the cloth cover off the object and slammed it on the table. An axe.
“This,” he said, accented voice as thin as his arms, “is my dear friend’s weapon of choice.”
The laughter rose again, harder than before. Hauler wasn’t just the quickest draw in town. He was accurate. He was undefeated. Despite over fifty duels, he was unscathed.
II
Three tables had been placed outside the saloon on the desert street. Much of the town had formed a crowd on the other side of the tables. The colossal man, who the thin stranger had called “Lumberjack”, stood at one table, Hauler at the other. The thin man, Doc, at the middle. Heaps of cash, coin, gold, and silver were set at the middle table. Doc was offering twenty-to-one odds that Lumberjack would beat Hauler at a duel.
“I’d put our whole house on two-to-one odds,” Peter overheard a woman say. “Twenty-to-one? Rob, you have to put more down!”
It seemed the whole town had gathered to bet against Lumberjack. An axe? In a duel? A duel? Lumberjack’s scowl must’ve been painted on, as his face hadn’t much more than blinked since he had burst into the saloon. The pair are drunk, Peter thought. Or this is just a fancy form of execution by some fringe village.
When it was finally Peter’s turn to place his money on the table, he set two hundred and forty dollars on the table. It was all he had to his name after over two decades of living off of his poker earnings all across the continent.
“What’ll it be?” Doc asked. He grinned widely. Confidently. His smile etched into his face like stone. Peter glanced at Lumberjack. The monster’s face, for just a flash, changed. His brow furrowed, mouth twitched. Had Peter blinked, he would have missed it.
“Put it on Lumberjack,” Peter said. “All of it.”
Doc glared at him, counting out nearly five thousand and placing it with Peter’s bet in front of Lumberjack. “Good luck,” Doc said with a smile. He handed Peter a ticket with his bet’s information on it.
An hour before twilight, all bets had been placed. Several fortunes had been placed on the tables, all of them staked by twenty times the amount. How rich were these men?
Only two people had placed bets on Lumberjack. Peter and the man dressed in maroon.
III
At noon, the town gathered around the dueling pit. It was dug ten feet deep into the ground with another fifteen feet of dirt piled around it. The town gathered atop the mounds of dirt and the hill nearby that cascaded above.
Dueling was a sport upheld by the strong arm of the public and the blind eye of the law. The sheriff and his deputies never came to the show, though they always watched from the sidelines. Duels, Peter had learned throughout his travels, could turn into bloodbaths quickly when out-of-towners’ lead duelist lost.
“One bullet,” Walley, the saloon owner, announced. “And, err, one axe. Line up heel-to-heel. On my mark, step ten paces. Stop. About-phase. Reach for your weapon but do not touch it. Following a count of three, I will fire my pistol into the air. You will draw your weapons. If both men stand, you will receive another bullet… or have your axe returned to you. Then we shall begin again.”
Hauler and Lumberjack nodded. They stood back-to-back at the center of the pit. “We shall continue,” Walley said, “until one man stands. Commence round one!”
The two walked ten paces, Lumberjack dragging his axe. Hauler had all the confidence of a master duelist. Every five or six towns had one. It was a thing of pride. Men who spent their entire lives honing their speed and accuracy firing from the hip. Hauler undoubtedly made a living off of cocky men like Lumberjack.
But was Lumberjack cocky, stupid, or something else? Either way, Peter had his entire life’s earnings on him. Only now did he realize how foolish it was. He had acted on instinct—Lumberjack seemed to have revealed something in that brief facial expression yesterday. What was he going to do? Peter had made a mistake as massive as Lumberjack’s arms. Would Lumberjack slap the bullet away? Did he really expect to be able to lift, aim, and chuck and axe quicker Hauler—a man who had spent his entire life training and dueling—could shoot him dead? Lumberjack would be dead before the axe was over his head.
The duelists turned, eyeing each other. Hauler’s hand hovered beside his pistol. Lumberjack held his axe with two hands, crouching slightly. It still touched the ground.
“Three! Two! One!” Walley fired into the air.
In the span of less than a second, Lumberjack heaved the axe in a semicircle, using its weight and momentum to turn himself around. Hauler drew his gun and fired. The shot landed just below Lumberjack’s right shoulder blade. He grunted loudly, an angered grizzly bear. Peter’s heart stopped.
Lumberjack tore off his shirt, revealing scars like rivers and valleys covering the landscape of his back. He’s done this before… Peter thought. A lot.
Lumberjack approached Hauler, walking with a pace of a normal man’s jog. He lifted his axe. Hauler stood frozen. Peter, too. And the crowd.
Lumberjack wouldn’t throw the axe. He tanked the bullet then went in for the kill. Hauler screamed. He tried to run up the pit, but Walley hollered at him. Abandoning the duel was against the rules, which came with a mortal consequence. Not that it mattered. Hauler kept sliding down, screaming.
Then the butchery began.
IV
Peter left Milntown with nearly five thousand dollars. Sometimes garbage hands took down the sure-wins. Tulips won in sword fights. Axes beat guns. Sometimes.
Before he left, Peter watched Doc and Lumberjack fade into the horizon. Doc and Lumberjack sat in a wagon, Doc tending to his wound. Their caravan consisted of at least three other men built like Lumberjack and a number of others, all with guns.
Lumberjack played his two-seven against the town’s ace-king. And the town brought all they had to the table.
#4. The Sky and Me by shadowflames
I have been kicked, thrown around, and rolled through the dirt. That has no meaning to me, however, as long as I go into the clear blue skies. Everytime I go through the air I feel a sense of freedom, as though my troubles just blow away in the breeze. As I am thrown through the air once more I wish more than anything that I could be a kite. That I could be something that followed no orders besides following the gentle dance of the wind.
I could go on and on about the freedom the sky gives me, but I should return to reality no matter my thoughts. To be honest I always bounce back no matter what happens to me, but there are times I feel like I am reaching a limit. That one day I will not be able to come back from the abuse that I am given. That one day my frustrations will burst out, lashing out at anyone near me.
To me every day passes by one after the other with no end in sight with only the sky as my true companion. It protected me when I could take no more abuse by crying out in a boom of anger. This outburst was usually followed by the sky’s sorrow, as it’s tears flowed down from the heavens. It comforted me that the sky would do this for me and I was glad to have someone that looked over me no matter what.
There were days that I thought I had lost my friend like when the light in the sky became a dark void for the few hours of the day. I was scared that I had lost my friend forever to the darkness. Although I do not know why my friend was lost in darkness, seeing it only made me more worried than anything. The sky was a place, no, a being of freedom to me. If the sky lost itself to darkness, then what am I?
I pondered this for days on end, until finally I had a thought. If the sky lost itself to the darkness within, then I would be there for it like it was for me. I could not ask the sky anything due to our distance, but I tried to make my intentions known to it. The sky must have heard me because it was bright and windy the next day.
The sky still had times when it was sad or angry, but I believe it knew I was there for it. Through thick and thin we have each other’s backs. The sky saved me in my darkest hours and I did the same for it.
There are times when I get depressed due to being kicked around, but I always bounce back to the present. For I know that the sky is with me no matter what happens to me. For I am a kickball and no matter what happens to me, my friend is here to stay. So even as life is draining from me and I know my form shall burst, I know one truth about my demise. That my spirit will join my friend now and forever.
#5 Coconut in Cherry Sauce by ducktoot
I used to cherish the weekly family visits to my grandma’s garish Goodwill smelling house. Over the years nothing ever seemed to change in the petite lavender painted home other than her growing collection of obese cats and knitted doilies. Much to my demise my children loved those fat cats and pleaded with my wife and I for a kitten every time we left Nana’s House. Never did I think that one of her cats would be the cause of a 911 call while I was patrolling in my cruiser nearby.
According to a distressed neighbor one of the fat cats had escaped my grandma’s house and was walking through the streets with its white fur coated in blood. The caller suspected a coyote attack. It was one of those panicked yet vague calls that made officers groan and pray that the person who reported it hadn’t mistaken a cougar for a housecat. I’d gladly receive a punch to the face from a perpetrator over responding an animal call any day, but as soon as I heard the location and dispatcher’s quoted description of “the fattest f***ing cat she’d ever seen in her life,” I knew that it was one of my grandma’s beloved cats.
When I arrived, the concerned neighbor waved me down from her doorway. A brief explanation from her told that she had prioritized getting her bulgy eyed chihuahuas into her house in case the coyote miraculously jumped the fence. The direction that the cat went was unknown and the neighbor lady just shrugged before pointing in a random direction. I internally rolled my eyes, she seemed to think I didn’t have better things to do than yell “Here kitty kitty” out the window of my cruiser for the next thirty minutes. The cat was probably as good as dead. For a moment I contemplated just leaving and praying that Nana wouldn’t notice one cat missing out of her abundant pet collection but I knew I wouldn’t be able to lie to her face.
I moved my squad car two houses down, in front of my grandma’s overgrown yard. The familiar wooden steps to her house were blackened from years of use and hearing them creak underfoot I felt for a moment like I wasn’t on duty.
Then I saw the blood.
A tiny trail of dried red footprints led off the porch and I followed. It took no time at all to find the cat under the neighbor’s japanese maple tree, licking matted blood out of its fur. Against the cat’s crying protest and clawing against the stiff material of my uniform I hefted the bloody animal in my arms and jogged back up the blackened porch. The grimy doorbell rang to the tune of the star spangled banner, a welcome sound ever since childhood. My grandma subtly peeked through the window’s curtains to the left of the doorway as she always did before opening the door.
“Brian!” Nana exclaimed, “You found Coconut!” Her voice sounded strained despite her obvious attempt at a cheery demeanor, and the wrinkles around her mouth seemed miles deep on her ghostly white face.
“Are you okay?”
“Of course!” She forced a sharp bark of laughter, “I was just worried about my favorite kitty.”
I narrowed my eyes, something seemed off. She looked frantic but hadn’t so much as glanced at Coconut since she opened the door. In fact, her eyes seemed to dart as if watching a fly buzz around, looking anywhere other than at me or the cat in my arms.
“Well, it looks like a coyote got her, you’ll probably need to get her to the vet. She looks pretty bloodied.” I moved to bring the squirming cat into the house before being blocked abruptly by my 5 foot tall grandma.
“Sorry hun, this isn’t a good time to visit.”
Something was very off. “Nana?”
“Oh, don’t get your socks in a bunch! I’m doing bingo night with the gals.”
“I’m pretty sure your friends can wait! I’ll help you get Coconut in the carrier so you can get her to the vet.” I pushed past her gently and walked down the hall towards the garage where she kept the cat crates.
Despite being midday all of the curtains were closed and the house was dim. It was quiet except for the faint sound of cats moving around in the kitchen which got louder with every step towards the garage. Grandma shuffled behind following with her hand on my elbow. We stopped in front of the kitchen.
“Brian” she tightened her grip.
The sound of Grandma’s cats filled the room as we stood in the doorway. The cats gathered around a bloodied corpse n the kitchen floor. The felines lapped at the blood as if it was milk and others tore at the dead flesh. Red paw prints were scattered around the white kitchen tile like poppies in the snow. I dropped the cat in my arms to the ground and it lazily joined the others.
“She cheated the game.” Grandma whispered.
My stomach churned as I looked at the obese cats gorging themselves on my grandma’s former bingo friend. This wasn’t their first human meal.
#6. “Janitor and the Blob” by Rzb125
And there I was again, cleaning the floor as if there was no tomorrow. I’m quite good at it, you know? After 15 years of doing the same thing over and over again you get used to it. The music was blastin’ through my headphones, almost loud enough to permanently damage my hearing. I didn’t care, though. I just wanted to take that floor back to its usual shiny glory. We both know how cool being a janitor can be, but that’s not the point of this story.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. So I was cleaning the fuck out of that floor when I saw a huge blob of dirt chillin’ between two tiles. I swear to God, I had never seen anything so disgusting since the bathroom incident back in 2009. Well, I did the only logical thing: I tried to scrape it off with the mop. But what followed… it just changed my life, man.
I swear I heard the blob screaming as soon as the mop touched it. It was loud and honestly a little heartbreaking. I immediately dropped my mop on the floor and bent down to examine the dirty bugger. It was more even more disgusting from up close! It was made of dirt, lint, hair, old bubblegum and other substances that looked like they came straight from the toilet. I put my gloves on and got ready to suffer.
And yes, you guessed it. As soon as I touched it, it let out a loud scream. I was done. I picked it up. “This can’t possibly get any worse”, I thought. I was wrong.
“M-Michael! Please… don’t do it.”
IT SAID MY NAME! HOW CAN A BLOB OF DIRT DO THAT? I, of course, freaked out. This time I was the one who screamed. But don’t get me wrong, it was a manly scream.“Sorry, Michael. I… I just wanted you to notice me. I’ve been hiding behind a poster for years, watching you every day.”
“Wait… The one with an awful motivational quote?”
“It’s not that bad! It did motivate me to come down here to talk to you.”
“No way! You’re filthy and disgusting. I get paid to get rid of things like you, and… I… I love you.”
“That’s what I wanted to tell you, I love you too!”
And, before you make fun of me, I don’t know why I said that. It was weird, I know. But I guess my heart took control of my mouth, because I really loved her. (Yeah, it’s a she, OK?)
So I picked her up, this time with no intentions of throwing her into the trash can. I took her home and talked with her for hours. I don’t know how I fell in love with a dirty blob so quickly, but it happened. We decided to get married and planned our perfect lives together. Before going to sleep, I decided to wash her to reveal her true beauty. But i didn’t realize that, if you clean a blob of dirt, the dirt isn’t the only thing that goes away. The blob does too.
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