WRiTE CLUB 2012 – Round 36

Twelve weeks of hard fought preliminary rounds conclude right here.  I want to apologize to all of the entries who never made it into the ring this year, but there were just too many submissions for me to accommodate all of them.  But as I said before, WRiTE CLUB SKIRMISHES will continue on after the official contest is over, so you’ll still get your opportunity for some awesome input.

Stargirl09 captured the 32^nd play-off spot and the other four winners, along with the entire list of 36, will be announced on Sunday. All of this week’s bouts (there are four of them) will be open for voting only until noon on Sunday and the first set of play-off bouts begin on Monday. 

So…for the last time…. 

Here are the randomly selected WRiTER's for the final round.

Standing in the far corner, weighing in at 500 words, please welcome to the ring……..Snivvy Crank.

 

They called her the pig-woman. No one said it to her face of course—that would be suicide—but they all thought it just the same. She had a great meaty head, a face like a grapefruit gone bad, and a vast, swollen body that left the meat traders desperately trying to get the words “price per pound” out of their heads. 

And she had a terrible temper.

She thundered down the dirt path, a trail of squashed daisies and buttercups in her wake.  The air was ripe for a mid-summer downpour; low thunderheads belched their hot breath across the length of the plateau home of the Blacksmithing clan. Wind billowed the pig-woman’s dress about her, teasing a ridiculous doily off her head until she was forced to hold the thing down with her enormous hand. She paused in her march to huff and heave and blow spittle into the wind. 

“Curse them!” she panted, leaning upon her knees and feeling the sweat soak through her pantaloons. Her legs felt as though they were on fire—slow roasting with perspiration. She wiped her brow with the wretched doily before returning it to the top of her head.

“Wootz! Stop dawdling, you louse, and get over here!” she yelled. The hand not busy with the doily pulled at a short length of braided rope—a leash of sorts. She gave it another jerk. “I said, come here, you stuttering jackass!” She gave the rope one more vicious tug and a small wheezy voice stuttered from somewhere behind the pig-woman.

“Y-y-y-es, W-w-wini-f-fred, d-d-dear….”

The voice belonged to a sad little man who happened to be the pig-woman’s husband, Master Wootz. Everything about the man’s face was saggy, cheerless, and wrinkled—like a pair of oversized trousers—and his neck was permanently stooped from the pig-woman’s incessant tugging upon the leash. Even his eyes appeared to have been drawn at a downward tilt, leaving a permanent expression of “Why me?” sketched onto his face. 

The man gazed around the pig-woman’s bulk at the open cart path—the sort of longing gaze a hound might give an open field—before another jerk on the rope brought him back, cowering in the shadow of her massive behind.

             

“Curse them!” the pig-woman spat, her mind churning with foul thoughts. The day had been going wonderfully, just wonderfully, and then that…that thing had to happen in the garden. Winifred hated unpleasant surprises—unless she was the one doing the surprising—and the thing in the garden had been a most unpleasant surprise indeed; one moment she was merrily wringing the necks of two rabbits she’d cornered in the radishes, and the next moment her blood pressure was careening skyward as she eavesdropped on two women conversing just on the other side of the garden wall. The pig-woman’s brain rehashed the conversation as it had all morning, in a kind of anger-induced replay:

“Yes! It is true…the Smyth baby was born just a week ago—they’re having the naming party tonight.”

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And in the near corner, weighing in at 486 words, let me introduce to you ……..Whoopity Scoot.

It's an age-old place, this automobile repair shop. I open the door and walk in.

A waiting room is to my left. The main desk and garage is to my right. In between is a space that can only be described as an impromptu museum: a jumbled collection of all kinds of things, all on display. Most have little descriptive cards. But very few have anything to do with automobiles. As I walk through to meet the smiling woman at the desk, my eyes brush over the items I pass: a WWII-era brown leather bomber jacket - complete with patches, a classic push-button cash register (the kind with a real little bell that goes "ka-ching" when the clerk rings up a sale), two cabinet-style wooden Philco radios, and a red Coca Cola ice box that has "ice cold in bottles" and "5 cents" painted on it in white. There's a vintage school desk, its wood desk top and chair aged a to deep brown, and held together by a black wrought iron framework. There are a couple of old suitcases, a barber pole, several American flags, and an authentic tin soldier collection in a glass case. There's even one of those five-foot-tall wooden cigar store Indian statues. It stands guard at the desk, its solemn carved face watching me as I hand over the keys to my truck.

I turn and head back to the waiting room, taking my time, because there is still more to see. A wedding dress, its once-white fabric mellowed now to an antique yellow, hangs on a dressmaker's dummy, complete with a string of pearls. Behind that is a long glass case holding all shapes, sizes and colors of glass bottles that seem to light up as they catch the sunbeams shining in through the wide window just behind the case. Some of the walls are edged where they meet the ceiling with double rows of the most extensive baseball/trucker cap collection I have ever seen, each cap enclosed in its own clear plastic bag. Other walls boast decades-old license plates, some of them rusty, from a wide variety of states.

From my mismatched chair in the waiting room, I turn and look back at this little museum. There is a thin layer of dust draped over these mementoes of times long past. But it's not the dust of neglect. It's the dust of preservation; of not wanting to disturb the memories lovingly connected to these things that were used, lived with, cared for, loved.

Before long, the woman from the desk comes to tell me I'm all set. As I leave the shop, keys in hand and ready to drive back home, I think about all I have seen here. To the people who owned these things, each item is wrapped in memories, waiting to be relived. But to me, each item is wrapped in stories, waiting to be told.

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Anyone can participate in the voting, all you have to do is make sure you sign up on the Linky List found by clicking on the badge below before making a choice.  Remember, the voting for all of this week’s bouts will only remain open until noon on Sunday, October 21st.

Here in WRiTE CLUB, it’s not about the last man/woman standing, it’s about who knocks the audience out!