WRiTE CLUB is a writing community sensation sponsored by the DFWWriters Conference - loosely based on the popular movie Fight Club. There are numerous versions of this concept floating around the internet, but nothing like we do it here. This unique approach embodies simple, good-natured competition, with lots and lots of fun sprinkled on top.
The ring this year has seen numerous clashes of nothing but the highest quality writing...each with their own unique qualities and offerings...but unfortunately the ring is meant to hold only two. In order to solve this problem I bring to you four awesome writers in a pair of semi-final bouts and ask the readership to vote one more time. This is the last round where the readers have a say...so I hope that everyone takes advantage of the opportunity. And when your finished please let all your friends know as well.
There is no wildcard to fallback on any longer. The two semi-final winners we pick this week will be asked to offer one more 500 word submission, which will be put before our celebrity judges and a winner will be announced at the DFW Conference on July 25th. This years journey is almost over and a crown beckons. Voting will remain open for both semi-final bouts until 6 PM (CST) Sunday, July 19th.
How about we finish choosing who those two writers are?
In the near corner, no stranger to the ring, representing the Women's Fiction genre with 500 words, here is Cloudwatcher.
“Hey, Bitch, how’s it going being dead? You don’t remember me. I’m Cara, the fifth of your six kids. I came along after you’d given up on everything…except drinking. But, I’m here to forgive you, not insult you, you old chain-smoking, friendless, unhappy Mother.”
I looked up from the plain, bronze marker flush to the ground bearing only her name and the years she lived. For the first time in twenty years, I was in Pecos, New Mexico, looking at a sky so blue and clouds so white they hurt my eyes.
“I stopped drinking six months ago—I’m in a program. I’m supposed to think of one thing to thank you for. I’m also working on my character defects: resentment and sarcasm. Uh, nice place you have here.”
The treeless acre of rocky dirt and scraggly weeds sat on a hill above the little Catholic church’s roof-line. Its barbed wire fence was ringed with tall pines and scrub oak. The constant breeze carried the sound of the swishing branches and the pinons’ distinctive fragrance. Stretched out to eternity before me were the blue Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I shaded my eyes as I noticed Mom’s neighbors. Some of the mismatched memorials were surrounded by picket fences, or guarded by life-sized angels, or simply outlined with piled rock. Many had faded, plastic flowers. The inscriptions remembered beloved fathers, veterans, or loving mothers.
Loving mothers…this was hard for me. We shared so many faults. Resentment was her mother’s milk—not that she ever breast-fed me.
“Sorry to call you a bitch. I know you had it rough…like me.”
Without really needing my presence, she would talk for hours about her tragic life, pausing only to strike the blue-topped match across the cardboard box as she jutted the cigarette into the flame. She was prematurely born to a beauty who died soon after. She rarely saw the artist father she idolized. From here her ramblings proceeded to place blame where it belonged—on everyone else. She wasn’t an artist because her relatives wouldn’t pay for art school. She wasn’t happily married because the handsome, athletic man changed into a drunken brute. Worst of all, she wasn’t free because her religion demanded she have six children when she only wanted four.
“Who tells her own kid she isn’t wanted, Mom? Who tells her, in the most matter-of-fact way, that she tried to kill herself when she found out she was pregnant? That they’d both be dead if her sixteen-year-old son hadn’t cut her down? Who tells her own child that she couldn’t stand to hold her? YOU. That’s who.”
I was shaking when I finished the tirade that only the wind heard.
“I’ve got to let MY resentments go, Mom! I’ve got to or I’m going right back to that alcoholic hell I just escaped.”
I bent over and touched her nameplate.
“You never knew…I’m an artist, Mom…thank you.”
I straightened, sighed, and then stepped in front of my father’s grave.
“Hello, Asshole.”
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In the far corner, also no stranger to the ring, representing the Post Apocalyptic genre with 496 words, here is MissWriteNow.
I always assumed painting “SOS” on a roof is something people only do in the movies. The pink splatter across my jeans proves otherwise. Unless I’m asleep, then eventually I’ll wake up from this hell. Unlikely.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of my “O”, I nibble into sweetness. KitKat isn’t my favorite, but when shit hits the fan, any variety of chocolate will do.
“Seriously,” Parker yells from the roof’s access door. “Are you really eating the last candy bar?”
Busted.
I lick the evidence off my fingers. “Don’t act like you’re starving. There’s noodles in the cupboard.” And there is, plenty of them. Besides, I’m the girl and the youngest. So it makes perfect sense that I should get the chocolate.
“Whatever. Be a selfish brat.” He walks to the building’s ledge, shaking his head like I’ve just committed the ultimate sin.
“I’m not a brat! And I’m not selfish,” I argue, standing to follow him. “You’re the one who spends twenty minutes in the bathroom every evening doing God only knows what.”
He whips around to face me. “That’s the only time I have any privacy, if that even counts, considering you stand in the hall, banging on the door for fifteen of those twenty minutes!”
“Shut-up! You’re such a jer—”
I freeze, listening. Please, God, no. Not the boats again.
Parker yanks my arm. “Get down.”
On our knees, we peek over our building’s edge. Three boats, the kind used for skiing, wiz down our street, make a U-turn at the corner, and speed back toward us. My heart threatens to break a rib with its beating.
Glass shatters from one of the windows across the street. Laughs carry up our apartment complex, forcing me to duck low and control my uncontrollable breathing. In no way do I want those men to see me.
“What are they doing?” I whisper.
Parker rolls his eyes. “They’re taking the neighbor’s chocolate. But don’t worry, we’re safe.”
He thinks he’s funny. There’s nothing funny about gun-toting men in ski boats, robbing every apartment in the city. I’m just glad everyone evacuated when the storms started—everyone but us.
Parker turns and flops next to me, putting his elbows on his knees. “I think we should try to leave here. Find a safer place. I’ll go out tonight, see what the north side looks like.”
That row boat in the parking garage isn’t the safest thing, considering those motor boats will catch him easy enough. And he won’t let me go, even if I wanted to. Without me, Gran will wander off and we’ll never see her again, or she’ll forget to take her pills, and funerals stopped happening when the world flooded. But my arguments won’t keep him with me.
Gawking at my shoe laces, I blink tears away.
I reach over and fold my hand around Parker’s thumb, just like when we were kids. “If you find a Hershey’s bar, save me a square.”
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Choose which of these pieces resonates with you the most and cast your vote in the comments section below.
This is WRiTE CLUB...where the audience gets clobbered.
