Here we go again. To kick off 2015 we are looking for the best 50 word story we can find on any subject. The story cannot be a submission in any of our other story contests. It can be in any genre. Post the stories in the comments below. The deadline is midnight on April 6, 2015. Why this date? It just feels like the beginning of spring. I know spring starts in March, but it generally snows here in March.
Winner of the contest will win 3 months of ads on EWR. This is $1000 (approx) value. You can promote anything to do with writing, or other subjects, we reserve the right to deny ads on subjects we do not agree with. All books are ok. All publications are generally ok.
This is our first contest of the year, so please make it a good one. You can, of course, enter as many times as you like.
Quick rules:
1. Story must be 5o words or under
2. Cannot be used in any of OUR other contests
3. Most be posted in the comments below.
MAKE SURE YOU put in your real email address when you post the story. We need to contact you if you win.
We will announce the winner on 4/9/15. It will be done in one of our movie chats (details TBA).
If you have any questions, emails us.
Top 3 winners will be published on EWR: Short Stories.
GOOD LUCK!
“Search for a man but DON’T.” Stated Madeline. “Be available but NOT.” “Be mysterious but NOT, if you catch my drift.” Ava didn’t. The conversation was nonsensical. ‘How did coffee become an intervention?’ Ava thought. ‘Madeline likes to fix things!’ Her conscience, Woody Allen, joked. Ava knew she was broken.
The five aggressors come toward me like they do every morning, gripping me tightly, yet not crushing me. Pour, pour, pour – stop! I’m drowning! I turn over. Ever so empty I become. Useless. Shelved again. Until morning. There has to be something more than just…juice.
My mother never swears, only one day she found ticks on our dog. She plucked them off, growling, “These motherfuckers.”
In a glass bowl, she lit a fire and dropped them in, where they exploded like bombs full of tar.
“I guess this bowl is ruined,” she said and smiled.
They said I could win adspace. For a story. Fifty words. I wondered about file compression. WinZip. Or some sort of distillation. Like a good whiskey. So much to squeeze into that small space. Then I wondered about the prize. And I had to ask myself: What am I selling…?
Her life crumbled in a pleated unifrom, her having her hair cut, they both wanted a boy, not a girl, her psyche wanted to rebel now, outside the gate, she started whispering the rhythm, slowly at first, loudly then, “two green eyes, melancholically nice,make me sigh…” Where’s my life?
Angel Tombstone
Boys dressed in black came to their saloon. The smell of sputum spittoons permeated the room. They swept the sawdust, rearranged the chairs for Father Duffy’s mass. Doc asked me to get the scatter gun from behind the bar. Carnage shortly ensued in the alley up the street.
“Look at the sky,” she said. “It‘s like that night at the Cape.”
He glanced up from his plate. Swirling clouds, grey, red. I knew I shouldn’t have let him go out, he thought.
“Yes,” he said. He turned back to his steak. Swirling juices, grey, red.
A Poem for Ned…
“If you had to tell me a poem without rehearsal, what would you say?” asked Ned to his grandfather, who said, “With the heart-felt cooled winds of fall comes the death of winter. Clean and silent, spring is on her annual way.” “Wow,” said Ned.
Twin´s Lament
Why do you lie so still? From the moment I could feel I´ve felt you. It was the same for you, but can you feel me now? I could always hear your heartbeat, sometimes mistaking it for my own. Yours is gone. Mine goes on.
The prospective employer asked, Can you cook? Yes. I answered. Will you show me your way? Can you iron? Yes. Will you show me your way? Can you keep a secret? Definitely! She showed me the body on the floor. Her husband. My lover. I smiled. I got the job.
The decarnated spirit of the girl has been wandering the locale for a dozen years. Last night she came out to feed on the anger of the lonely driver speeding along the highway. Fire Services hosed down his remains with a power hose. Since there was only slush or mush.
“How’s the beach?” the lifeguard asked my boy.
“Too damn sandy… Hey, you work down here and know everything about the ocean, right?”
He nodded.
“Well, it’s the darndest thing… can you explain why my turds sink in the toilet back home but then float here in the ocean?”
Four photo albums filled with Polaroids of squirrel homicides served as his Senior art exhibit. “One Step From Freedom,” “U-Turn,” “Oblivious,” and “Obliterated,” three Polaroids were framed in ramshackled wood, wreathed with bushy, tan tails: “Arnold Waves to Heaven,” “Gabe Blows His Top,” and “Kirby #3 Discovers Roller Blades.”
“Mother is the word for God on the lips of all children.” The angel spoke softly in her ear. Before she could reply, the winged messenger was gone, leaving our Mother Mary alone with the Son growing inside her.
She screamed in silence when the frat boys tore at clothes, and dug their nails into her beautiful flesh. She had never meant to ignore them before but she could never answer their catcalls and insults with the wit of her sharp mind. She was mute.
My father was 37 when he lost his left shinbone, or, rather, when it was taken from him. The surgeons treated him with care, but wasted no time shattering illusions; with multiple fractures of the tibia, he limped with a leg two inches shorter, for the rest of his days.
I handed her my treasure.
“Orange?”
“Tangelo. Soft, juicy, sweet; skin falls right off,” I said.
“An orange. What’s with the nipple?”
“Taste it,” I said.
She tore off the “nipple,” broke the tender flesh, and slid a wedge into her mouth. “Like an orange.”
Our relationship’s fate thus sealed.
Biology. Janine in front of me, reaching back. Her fingers face me. Drawn eyes on each one look at me.
I smile at her finger eyes, lick my fingers, stick them to hers, press hard, hold them there.
Janine’s eyes. My eyes. Bell rings. Empty room. I kiss each finger.
Today we broke the divorce to our five children. Shocked. Stunned. Wailing tears. The oldest explained to the younger ones that this had happened with him and his girlfriend. He still loved her. She didn’t love him. His dark eyes and somber curls explained it better than either of us.
Decorating the tree, we sincerely marveled when placing the last foraged trinket.
I lit Yule logs expectantly for anyone festively overhead.
The Palm was an absurdly draped silhouette our boys danced beneath.
Mesmerized by the tinsel mockery of the infinite ocean,
I bleakly prayed for a miracle before we starved.
“Wow, A chance through a writing contest to really show our style of writing in fifty words or less!” Let the stories begin!
Every morning walking past the small 1970 vintage, sky blue, two bedroom trailer with the white shutters; I’d often noticed a master lock on the door.
The light will come on
As It always does
And The porch is clean
Just to be seen
Locked behind Iron
Just beyond wood
In the mid of space
A corner in place
But Empty it sits
Still staring me back
I wonder to know
Why? Where did he go
Every strike against his face broke him down – grinding him into the street as the others walked by.
The sharp corners of each of each flake sliced his paper-thin skin.
As a child – he loved to go sledding with his brothers – now each flurry brought nothing but cruel sting.
Turquoise waves lapped around my feet. The rhythm of steel drums drifted down the shore. We meandered languorously, remembering our dreams from long ago. All shattered. Nothing left but our love and faith in each other. Our fingers intertwined and my heart pounded as the tears fell in the sand.
One month after her discharge from the hospital with a hemorrhagic stroke, my mother was back on the job. I was worried.She would not stay home unless absolutely necessary. She came home with a smile, “Stop worrying. Your body will never heal itself should anything untoward happen to it.”
BOB’S YOUR UNCLE
Don Simser beamed as his wife Susan called informing him of a delivery
made by his wealthy uncle, following Don’s auto accident.
“Here’s the card from uncle Bob,” said Susan upon Don’s return.
“Card!” Don lamented. “What the hell, Susan? I thought you’d said he’d delivered a GET WELL CAR.”
The vagrant was gazing at the body sprawled on the pavement in a pool of blood and shaking his head while pulling at his beard.
“Do you know what happened to him?” Questioned the detective.
“Sure. Who doesn’t?”
“Well?”
“He kicked the bucket and gone to meet his Maker.”
“Mammy! Dey tief de kitchen towel from de line!”
“No Mammy! She trow dem in de dustbin!”
When Sandra see de look on she sister face, she run and hide.
“Mammy. She didn’ use de boiling water and it was smellin'”
Sandra is still running away from her sister’s fury.
“The men are free to go.”
“What are you saying? They shot the man.”
“Just got the report from the pathologist. They shot a dead man.”
“He was on his feet. There were witnesses.”
“Here. Read the report.”
“The victim suffered a heart attack. Then shot. Then fell. Case closed.”
Italy confronted him. On the first bus, he caught his foot getting out. So he stood here, rubbing his calf, in the middle of Rome. His service in Africa ended too soon, a shift in government and faith. He needed more than a cool bench to think through this.
NOBODY’ PERFECT
Doctor Lorne Calder returned home to meet with Bert Ryan, a carpenter he’d hired to complete renovations at his home. Upon entry he noticed a flaw in the foyer.
“You’re a master carpenter? Just look at that!” Calder complained.
“It’s easier for you,” replied Ryan. “You bury all your mistakes.”
‘The Bullet Shatters His Right Ventricle Into a Shower of Meaty Chunks, Bloody Gristle Drip Drip Dripping Through His Shirt, His Chest A Gaping Cavity Of Human Broth and Twitching Nerves, The Shell of His Ribcage a Playground for Maggots.’
Or, ‘Battle Scars’.
“I don’t love you anymore,” she whispers.
The stiffness in my body was gone. But I remained silent. She was scolding my father for hitting me too hard. And ensuring that I be administered the correct dosage. In my twelve years this is the first time my mother hugged me. I didn’t want her to let go.
The hunter lifted his rifle, and with his finger on the trigger aimed it at the squirrel, who in turn lifted his baby and showed the hunter.
His partner said, “I told you. Squirrels go to university now. They smarter than us.”
On his way home after working the graveyard shift, my brother encountered a white goat in the middle of the road. A couple hundred feet later he met another. And another. He said to himself, ‘how so many goats out tonight?’ The goat answered, “Is only me Frank.”
AFTERMATH
Cleave. Cleavage. Cleave. A love affair in three words. They married. She strayed. He embraced the axe. Split her blonde head like a honeydew. Cleave to her. Honey, do not push me with your infidelities. Cleave in two. Cleave. Divide and conquer what love cannot. Wide-set blue eyes cleaved wider.
Five orange tissue-paper lilies were on the kitchen table, each one affixed with a tag: this flower symbolizes hatred. Tomorrow was delivery day. Anne thought it only fair to give warning.
Wilma, Toni, Leroy, C.J., and Mary had all betrayed her. Time to give them what they had coming.
The order came in at an inopportune time. No matter. She could improvise. She left the establishment with the order and some complaints that it wasn’t her turn. She received the looks of disdain with a haughty turn of the head.The diamond ring safely in her pocket. Finders keepers.
“Truth.”
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
“Nothing.”
“What a cop-out!”
“No. When I lived in Italy– late one night, I saw a woman getting stabbed. I did nothing.”
“You can’t make things up. It’s against the rules.”
He just stared.
“How about dare?”
“Yeah. Let’s go with dare.”
“I once worked as a grave digger.”
“Yeah?”
“Hard work, digging graves. Fun afterwards when I’d pack down the grave earth. I’d leap up and down, up and down.”
“What did the family say? “
“I waited till they left.”
“Good idea.”
He clasped his hands tightly. In his fist, he held the pink bow from her baby pictures.
They said their I do’s, planted their kisses. As she passed him in the aisle, she mouthed: “I love you, Daddy.”
He sighed— felt the bow in his palm— and let it go.
Death does not haunt me. She lay off the path of the bottle strewn alley.
Her porcelain skin glistened with morning dew and a manicured hand rested against the splay of her black, silken hair.
It is her eyes, like blue sapphires that wake me in the night.
I threw him in the car, 200 pounds of stink and human meat, and drove to the hospital. Stayed there with him, and held him back with my hand on his chest when he tried to run out in his gown and fuzzy hospital socks.
Money is like this little one. It is never yours. When you first enter the world of work it belongs to your employer. You spend it on yourself in the way he specifies. Next comes the children until they complete university. Then the doctors and pharmacies. Never yours.
The offensive scent emanating from the lower levels were reminiscent of the days when we had to dispose of the bodies, after solving the problems ourselves. Eventually the reprobates who lived next door were down to one. The property changed hands and constitution. Now the good old days are back!
Poltergeist
Broken glass, a hole in the wall and muffled cries from the farthest room. This dark spirit had been selfishly invited through contempt. It’s perfume, whispers and touch had a name he now couldn’t speak. Relentlessly the wife repeated it as pieces of their life flew through the air.
He came in through the door breathing hard and bending over, holding his knees.
“Brother? What’s wrong?”
“I saw it, sister. The horse wearing spectacles and one flat shoe!”
“You didn’t!”
‘Yes. I light the match like I was told, and it vanished. Sister? Why do you look so scared?
Karl, the pool man, saw the head floating in the pool. There was no blood. He calmly gathered his cleaning paraphernalia and exited the compound. In his car about to turn on the ignition a voice from the rear says. “Hello Karl what took you so long? You’re dead!”
Overheard: “Earthlings are so primitive and lacking basic intelligence. It’s a shame to be on the same planet. They call this ‘cancer’ when it is a mutation. In the name of medicine, they kill those chosen to lead. They say they are ‘healing’ them. It is time to reveal our identities.”
We were discussing nursing homes for my father when he interrupted.
“Why should I want to spend my last days with a bunch of rickety, decrepit beings like myself?”
“Father, you have common interests.”
“Rickety and decrepit.” He reiterated.
So, with a hammock on the porch, my father is happy.
She wished forever for the thaw.
It had been an endless season of mismatched mittens, salt-streaked floors, and the frozen temperaments of her children.
But in the end, the anticipated drops of unraveling icicles only made her cry.
“Can we go outside?” begged the youngest.
“Yes,” reluctantly letting them go.
As he crossed the bridge, he felt the police batons striking his head, sending him into a brief delirium where he saw himself as an old man, beginning the walk again, holding the hand of a future black US President.
His great leaps glide him across the flat green as if his blood his helium. The violent twisting cone swiftly closes in. His body is sucked up. Near the top, the funnel spews the flailing form. The involuntary contortionist screams, “Stop tearing trees down! Enough with the developing land already!”
His hands tremble as they meet to brush her lips and stroke her smooth pale cheek, just before someone behind him pulls him away. He struggles against the burly arms and breaks free, reaching her side, just as the bullet rips through his flesh.
Still he holds onto her, crying.
He remembers nothing.
They enter a bright room.
He has a daughter.
He hears voices, they are real. Unlike the ones in his head.
Eyes are on him, whispers in the crowd.
“Killed her,” he hears, “innocent girl”.
Then, “guilty”, “hanged”.
He wonders where they had taken his little girl.
The old man walked out of the pastry store, carry the big brown paper bag full of rolls for his wife to cook into a cake. He wandered slowly across the left corner only to look into the thick darkness of the alley that flung him into his slow death.
Everyone turned and stared quizzically. Something in her stomach twisted, but her eyes stayed level and passionate. The last words echoed in the concrete corners, ringing off the walls like bells from Bok Tower. A tingle rested on her tongue, where retaliations rested. The applause started, and the tingles disappeared.
Golden waves of intelligence, the handiwork of men. A scarlet rose unraveled by the crimson blood dripping down. This is what holds us together. Lines of imperfect beauty and our love on her lips. We are no longer looking through the crescent together. Under the arc, I am alone.
Girl smiles at boy. Boy smiles back. A feeling flickers between them- and then it is gone. Cold knife is passed from warm hand to warm hand. Girl coats fingers in paint. Boy draws colored hands across faces. Maps are folded. Packs are shouldered. Eyes are quick. The hunt begins.
Lydia broke off from her preschool group at the enticing sight of the park swings. She felt a strong hand pushing her higher and higher into the clouds. Then she went from a feeling of pushing and pulling. The teacher still hadn’t noticed her missing. That’s how quick taking is.
Growing up, up, up. Unfurling into green and pink beauty all admire. Green mast of water and string, slowly turning brown, then sinking into nothingness. Just fades into the background never to be seen again. Beauty comes in misconceptions, a matter of time, slowly blooming into life then gone the next.
Keri sat on the edge of the building next to Sean. He’d acted strange lately, never talking. She took his hand, brushing her lips across his cheek.
Sean turned away, gritting his teeth.
“They contacted me, said I have 24 hours to choose.”
Keri gasped at the implied organization.
“I’m not gonna die, Keri.”
He pushed her off the building.
You drowned me with your kiss, then I suffocated in a sea. A furious cyclone of angst fell from my eyes. You held my hand, before abandoning me in a frigid forest. ‘I love you’ fell from deceitful lips. But you are gone and I’m wondering why I’m not dead.
The world spins, then you fall. High heels breaking and you land. Face first. The coming months are full of patching. They take some from your hip and then stich it onto your face. Eyes maligned by seeing your body. You wish you could use those glasses you smashed. Sad.
Nekkid in the creek and blood pooling and dissolving again in the water, on the rocks. The Bridge to Terabithia in real life, one would think. Nothing around but birds chirping as if nothing had happened. Dying alone had seemed unreal, like the mist. But not now. Not anymore.
The hand holding. His lips claiming mine. Wedding bells. Our new home. Our love was strong, but nothing’s stronger than his cold grip on my throat. He was breathing, I was dying. He was smiling, I was crying. After the incident, I promised I’d watch over him.
Now, I am.
“Please,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry.”
She stares at you with a quiet kind of sadness, stationed next to a girl who looks exactly like her. They both hover a few feet off of the ground.
She fingers the rope looped around the other girl’s swollen neck.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
So bitter this tasteless pall. Color removed, novelties resurgence. Sapped from a cradles wake I venture not to seek yet not act upon as well. Out of apprehension, perhaps. Or is it apathy or deception for seeing and observing are separate endeavors, the inconsequential eye hurried, the curious one wavering not until dispelled from illusion.
Awake
God’s pallet exists under a veil of Himalayan air where shades of indigo permeate into a lush countryside. My breathes become short and feet grow more and more weary, but my spirit hardens with the rock I tread and the summit is drawing near; Buzz, buzz, time for school.
She lies on her belly in the grass and hardly dares to breathe, a scrap of meat held between her fingers. The fox flicks his velvety ears and inches closer, his golden eyes shifting from her to the meat. He sniffs the offering.
“Renya!”
He bolts back into the underbrush.
“No more troubles!” My mother was angry enough to give herself a stroke.
“I forgot, I’ll do it now.”
Three minutes later.
“I restarted the computer Mother, and it is working just fine.” She was still slamming pots in the kitchen. “I forgot.”
“You are not allowed to forget. Simple.”
I opened my front door to check my mailbox and to my surprise there placed was a newborn baby girl in a sweet grass basket with a note that read
“I hear your prayers, I hear your soul”
god” I kiss her and whispered in her ear “welcome home”.
I woke up, looked around, nothing but endless grass hills in sight. I noticed I was sitting under a familiar tree since childhood.
A well dressed strange man came from behind it smiling.”Where am I?’ I protested. He bent down and replied “Outside of time, enjoy your stay”.
As Nina sat in front of her night time mirror brushing her long jet black mane, she asked her reflection was she beautiful. Her reflection turned its back and then back around. With pimples, brown teeth, and bulging eyes it responded, “What’s this to you?”.
The last thirty-first, I made a list of twenty nine scrupulously chosen items. I carefully looked it over; the words had to be perfect. When February came, how happy I was, reading my list, yet frustrated I hadn’t achieved one. When February went; twenty nine of them went with it.
My love smiled from the window. She waved, I waved back. Something glinted in the sunlight. My smile faded, my hand stilled. What had happened while I was away? Who was that man now standing by her, hand on her belly. Was that a bump? I hurried toward the gate.
Lucy and I were pushed to the centre of the circle; white garb billowed out around us as they danced, clapped and chanted strange long-syllabled words. The priest then announced we were witches. He demanded whips be brought to deliver us. I sprang on him at once; the others fled.
The old woman watched her cry all night. She empathized with her. She offered her a concoction which she drank without question.
The following day saw a visit by the girl accompanied by a young man who couldn’t keep his eyes of her. She whispered one word.Thank you.
The key gleamed in his calloused hand. Behind him, a childhood of broken promises and long struggles echoed the hallway. Marcus held his breath and faced the door. Years of backbreaking construction for Uncle, and turning cheek to easy money, led to this defining moment: a place of his own.
Soooo, did y’all, like… pick a winner?
Yes, we’ve run way over. The winner is coming. I promise. I’m sorry we are late, but there are so many great entries. We will post the winner by the end of the week. We have to contact the winner….
If you are wondering who won the 50 word story contest, look here: https://www.everywritersresource.com/50-word-story-contest-winner-dianna-craig/ We are really sorry that it took so long! We had a lot going the last couple of weeks…
Why Do Pigs Fly?
I looked through the window all I saw was rain crashing down. My teacher was talking about Germany or something but I’m not paying attention. I saw a pig a flying and I stand up and walk out of the classroom to get a better, look then it hit me…
The waters of fate.
The room was dark.
He lifted up the bag; a seemingly lifeless body was concealed inside.
He dumped the cold body of his unwilling victim in the warm waters of its fate.
It squirmed and wriggled.
“I’ll call you Gary,” he said.
Gary is a good name for a goldfish.
The scarlet soaked into the crisp white carpet, running lengths over the wool. Mum looks over in horror at what I have done. The crimson laughs evilly at us from the light carpet, proud of what it has done.
“You spilled the wine ” Mum shouts.