WRiTE CLUB 2018 - Bout #9

Reminder - You can follow along with all of the bout results right HERE, and remember, the bouts stay open for one week and some of the first weeks are still live.

Today is the 9th of 15 bouts with a pair of contestants ready to climb into the ring.  Here's a refresher of what's going on, in case you forgot how things work here.

Weeks ago the submission window opened for this year's contest where we asked anybody wishing to participate to submit a 500-word writing sample – using a pen name. The sample can be from any genre, flash fiction or something from a larger piece of work, basically, anything goes except that it cannot have been previously published or posted on the internet. All of the rules regarding how to submit can be found here. After the submission period closed, we had fifteen judges (we call them our slush pile readers) read all 181 submissions from 132 writers and once all the ballots were total we narrowed the 181 down to the 30 that will be stepping into the ring over the course of the next three weeks. Today is the first of those bouts.

How this works – two anonymous (pen name only) writing samples step into the ring. Visitors to this blog (that’s you) read both entries and vote for the one that resonates the most with you. We ask that you leave a brief critique for both writers with your vote because that is one of the real values of this contest – FEEDBACK. Please be respectful with your remarks!

Even though there will be a different bout every day (M-F), the voting for each bout will remain open for seven days from the date it is posted to give as many people as possible to have a say. The voting for today’s bout will close on Wednesday, May 2nd (noon central time).

It’s that simple. The piece that garnishes the most votes moves on to the next round where they’ll face a different opponent. Using a tournament style format, the 30 contestants will be whittled down to just 2, and the winner of that final bout will be announced at the DFW Writers Conference in Hurst TX June 9-10. 

In case of a tie, I’m the deciding vote. I can do that because, like all of you, I do not know the real names of our contestants either (my wife processes all the submissions).

Oh yeah – for every bout that you vote in, your name (see rule #2 below) will be placed into a hat for a chance for a $40 Barnes and Noble Gift card that will be drawn after the contest concludes.

A few rules –

1) One vote per visitor per bout.

2) Although our contestants are anonymous, voters cannot be. Anonymous votes will not count, so if you do not have a Google account and are voting as a guest, be sure to include your name and email address.

3)Using any method (email, social media, text, etc) to solicit votes for a specific contestant will result in that contestant's immediate disqualification. It’s perfectly okay, in fact, it is encouraged to spread the word about the contest to get more people to vote, just not for a specific writer!

That’s enough jibber-jabber…like the man say’s –

In the far corner, we have Catnipped representing the YA Paranormal Mystery genre.

I sipped. As potions go, it didn't taste half bad. The guy had called it a treatment. But I liked potion better, because potions were all about mysterious magical adventures and not just about a bought and paid for guinea pig. Easy money, my alley-mate had said. Not so much, I had since decided what with all these wires stuck to my shaved head. “What is this stuff?” I asked, something I probably should have found out before I signed the papers and took the money.

“A simple mixture,” Professor Baldy said. He’d told me his name. I’d promptly forgotten it because his name didn’t matter. All I cared about was the money. But that was before the wires and the head shaving and getting strapped into a chair at the front of a classroom with a gang of white-coated geeks gawking at me. Some looked bored. Several smirked. One was wide-eyed terrified. Another had a creepy hoping-for-a-cadaver grin.

“What does it do?” I asked.

“I can’t say,” the professor replied.

“You mean you don’t know.”

“I mean telling you would taint the results of this experiment.”

Uh. Huh.

“Go ahead. Drink up,” he urged like a bartender offering his latest feel-good concoction. 

I took a larger gulp and gagged. The sip had been not-so-horrible. A swallow was road-kill nasty.

“More,” he insisted.

The geeks stared. The professor glared. A row of machines impatiently beeped and blipped behind me. I’d signed the papers. I’d taken the money. I couldn’t back out now. I sighed, held my breath, and swigged down the rest.

A warm sensation started in my stomach and spread through me like a super-charged whiskey shot.

Baldy took the empty goblet. It was really a glass beaker, but I liked goblet better.

“It may take a few minutes,” he said more to the others than to me. “Try to relax.”

Relax. Right. Fat chance.

“While we wait…”

I half expected him to pull out a deck of cards.

“A little background information,” he continued instead in an announcer type voice. “The subject is…”

“My name is Arianna,” I interrupted.

“The subject is…” Baldy repeated. Apparently he cared about my name as much as I cared about his.

“A twenty-one-year-old female.”

Sixteen. Twenty-one. Not much difference, excepting they wouldn’t have paid a sixteen-year-old.

“Reasonably intelligent and relatively healthy.”

Relatives? Did he know about my brother? I squinted at him. He’d gone all blurry.

A monitor beeped faster.

“She also scored impressively high on our psychic aptitude tests.”

The monitor buzz-ga-leaped and then moaned. Or maybe it was me, because a killer headache suddenly stabbed me between the eyes. 

Baldy peered at the monitor. “Accelerated heart rate,” he announced. “Increased cortical activity. How do you feel?”

“Fine,” I lied. “Excepting I’m awfully hot.” Sweat drenched me. My flimsy gown clung to me like wet tissue.

A monitor suddenly went into a high pitched dit-dit-dit.

Baldy turned kind of pale.

“I’m fine,” I repeated just before everything wasn’t.

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And in the near corner, we have Canister McIntosh representing the Short Story genre.

Ross Barnett

     Twin Harbors doesn’t have a minimart. It doesn’t have a store, or a cash register, or anything like that. Just houses. They crust the edges of our little inlet on the Ross Barnett Reservoir, almost spilling into water, alive even, clamoring to get away from the driveways and the pine thicket that covers everything but the roads in this part of Mississippi. A-frame and two-stories and car ports all crawling down the bank to get away from the fact that nothing around here ever moves.

     Everybody in Twin Harbors, except for one, swims with the water moccasins and copperheads, and none of us are afraid. Once you see the older kids do it, you do it too, and everyone knows you never wade into the tall grass.

     Lois never swims with us. This is a known fact in Twin Harbors, that Lois Trudeau does not swim with us. Her aunt and uncle won’t let her go beyond the edge of their driveway. Most days you can find her standing at the edge of her property line, by the street, in short shorts and a tight t-shirt, watching for anyone who passes by. House arrest. Endless, and unexplained. In summertime, the days wheel by so slow, morning, afternoon and evening, all turning on that little patch of lawn, and that two-story house with the concrete slab out back, and I don’t know how she can stand it.

     At thirteen, Lois already looks like a woman. Round hips, C-cup boobs. She’s too pale to tan, but she tries anyway, lying next to me on a cheap TG & Y beach towel on the concrete slab porch, baking in the sun. In the summer, she smells like Coppertone and sweat, and when we go inside the cool, dark cave that is her aunt and uncle’s house, my skin as hot and tight as hers, she has this look, like she’s accomplished something her dead mother would be proud of.

     In the summer, most kids in Twin Harbors hang out at the dump. Lois stays home and plays her records. “Fat bottomed girls” and “We Are the Champions” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” When I come by after, she names the songs and glares at me when I don’t know what they are, in this way that says of course you don’t know.

     We stay up late, me and Lois, until the narrow strip of light under Aunt and Uncle’s bedroom door goes dark. The house smells cool, like a knife edge. Like the inside of her aunt’s clean refrigerator. And we listen to Queen records, and Lois tries to cornrow my hair even though it’s too fine. Then we dress up our faces with cheap TG&Y lipstick. How exciting it is, she says, all the changes. And how much more she will change, how her whole life will change, when she’s old enough to leave. No more house arrest. No more acne. No more aunt and uncle and Mississippi summer.

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Leave your votes and critiques in the comments below. Again, be respectful of your remarks and try to point positives as well as detractions.

We’ll be back tomorrow with another bout.  See you then.