WRiTE CLUB 2015 - Bout #5

What is WRiTE CLUB?  It started off as a modest writing competition, inspiration loosely derived from the movie FIGHT CLUB, and it has since grown into a writing community sensation that is now sponsored by the DFWWriters Conference.  There are numerous versions of this concept floating around the internet, but nothing like we do it here.  Its essence embodies simple, good-natured competition, with lots and lots of fun sprinkled on top. 

Over the course of ten weeks I’ll be holding daily bouts (M-F) between Anonymous 500 word writing samples, submitted under a pen name.   The writing can be any genre, any style (even poetry) with the word count being the only restriction. Today is Bout #5.  Read each sample carefully and then leave a vote in the comment section for the one that resonates with you the most.  Anyone can vote... but only once per bout. Don’t forget to leave with a brief critique of both submissions as well.

Voting for each bout will remain open for one week. The winner of each will be posted HERE, at the WRiTE CLUB scoreboard.  Are you ready?

Here are the first two randomly selected WRiTER's.

Standing in this corner, representing the contemporary erotica genre and weighing in at 500 words, please welcome to the ring……..A. P. Chelopech

It was in our fourth session from memory that Eva opened up to me on what was manifestly a difficult subject for her. I had, innocuously as I thought, asked her to tell me about her childhood. I was totally unprepared for what followed.

“I was at good school, school for kids of party members. You understand, I didn’t know such things then, I was only child. But something happened with my father, it was terrible time. One day, I was 10 and in 4th class, some people came to our home. We had nice house in Dragalevtsi, real house you know, not apartment.”

I interjected. “Was it your family’s own home?”

“Da, my grand-dad – his father, how do you say?”

“Your great-grandfather.”

“So, my great-grandfather, he build this house long before communist times. When I was small girl, my grand-parents live there, my mother, father, my little brother and me. It was very good and happy time.”

“But something happened.”

“Yes, these men came, it was dinner, they talk to my father in other room. My baba, she was crying, my mother, she looked scared, it made me scared too. My brother started crying too. Then they take my father from house. I didn’t see him again for long time, maybe more than one year. In a prison, far from Sofia.”

I was uncertain what to say, though something was needed. I could have brought up the inconsistencies in Eva’s verb tense usage, or seized on the missing articles, but I did neither. For I was disconcerted to see that she was on the verge of tears. I detected the glistening in those big dark eyes.

“God, that must have been awful for you.” It was insipid but the best I could do, I’m afraid.

“There was more. Some day, two-three days, after that, I am at school. During class, the teacher spoke to me, in front of all students. She speaks in bad way, not friendly, not polite way. She tells me I am leaving school. I must take everything from desk, shkafche – this is, um, locker I think, and just go. Go home. Leave knizhka – this is student book, with grades, but you know that – I always got sixes – leave it in office and just go from this school.”

Eva was hunched forward now, her hands together in her lap, the one a fist, the fingers of the other kneading between its knuckles, she staring out across the room. The tears resolutely holding back. I had the clear impression that I had been admitted to a different room, which mostly stayed locked up.

She proceeded to tell me of how she had gotten off the bus from her school, walked to her home, seen the flat-deck truck in front, her family’s belongings – furniture, appliances, hastily-packed cardboard boxes leaking contents – scattered about, some men loading them haphazardly onto the truck. Her grandmother remonstrating with these men, loudly, they indifferent, following orders, neighbours standing in the near distance, stone-faced.

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And in the other corner, representing the historical genre with 489 words let me introduce to you……….Annie Corvo

Jerusalem, December 1917

A scream from the alleyway below Jack Solms’ window. A woman’s scream, then shouted commands in German, then other shouts in a language he guessed was Turkish. The report of a handgun echoing off the stone walls in this quarter of the old walled city.

On his bed in the upper room, Jack ran a finger along the deck of cards he’d shuffled.

He wouldn’t look. Wouldn’t look out the window.

In spite of the wind whining through the streets as Jerusalem staggered toward its third Christmas at war, he kept the shutter propped open. Better to be cold than trapped. Better to leave the window open to the sounds of that conscription gang working its way through the streets than to suffocate with a mouth full of dirt. Knowing the collapsing trenches of the Western Front were half a world away was one thing. Making the nightmares believe it was another.

He couldn’t find his card. Why couldn’t he find the goddamned card?

He tossed the deck onto the blanket, clasped his shaking hands together. Tight. Tight. Breathe in, breathe out.

He’d been OK until the shooting started. He’d got himself dressed this morning without help, not an easy thing for a man with a leg blown halfway to hell. Dressed, shaved, even combed his hair. He had an intuition about those things he’d once taken for granted. It was like finding the card he wanted on the first try. It meant a good day, a day he could limp downstairs to help Isabelle with the shop’s bookkeeping.

Thank God for Isabelle. She’d saved him, lit into the surgeons, kept them from sawing his whole damn leg off. Lucky day for him when he married her. Not so lucky for her maybe, left with a crazy, crippled husband to look after.

The screaming in the alley had stopped. The tramping of boots sounded fainter. Maybe they were moving the other way, maybe this would be a good day after all, a day he could stave off taking a morphine tablet until evening. He had intuitions about things like that.

He’d never held much truck with intuitions until the war. Now he knew better, knew to depend on them the way all soldiers did, all who survived. Intuitions told him which side the shells would come in on, when to advance under fire, and when to flop belly down on the ground. Intuitions saved him¾except when they didn’t.

He gathered the cards again, cut the deck, and glanced at the top card before he shuffled. He’d worked for the past week to turn his few card tricks into a Christmas treat for Isabelle, a treat to make her smile, maybe even clap and laugh after the dreary years of war. The glow of her anticipated delight warmed him more than the heat from the room’s charcoal brazier.

The noises in the street started again.

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Enjoying two talented writers at work is only part of the price of admission, now it’s up to you to decide who moves forward to the playoffs.  In the comments below leave your vote for the winner.  Which one tickled your fancy?  After you vote please tell all of your friends to stop by and make a selection as well (but no coaching about who to vote for).  Yes, it’s subjective, but so is the entire publishing world.  It’s as much about the readers as it is about the writers. 

This is WRiTE CLUB – the contest where the audience gets clobbered!