Here's a recap in case the contest has escaped your notice before now, WRiTE CLUB (sponsored by the DFW Conference) is tournament-style contest that runs during the eight weeks prior to the conference and it provides writers the opportunity to compete against one another for a chance to win free admission to next year’s conference (along with other prizes). Here’s the kicker—it’s all done anonymously. Writers have submitted 500-word writing samples under pen names.
4) This is more of a suggestion than a rule - but cast your vote before you read other voter comments. Don't let yourself
Meet me at the corner of Weston and Hardison at 7 pm. If you call the police, she dies. If you don’t come alone, she dies. If you don’t show, she dies.
The note was tucked under the windshield wiper blade and was written on the back of sales ad from the grocery store next door. Shannon looked around, her pulse pounding. Who was “she”? Her mother was dead, she had four brothers, and no kids. The parking lot was busy as customers came and went, oblivious to her and the note. She checked her watch: 6:27. “Damn.” That didn’t give her much time to make it across town, especially if she hit traffic. She still didn’t know who “she” was, but she had to find out.
Shannon checked her watch again, she had to hurry. “Damn,” she said again before getting into her car and closing the door. She backed out of the parking lot and merged into the traffic. She was lucky, at this time of day, the traffic was moving in the opposite direction. She darted in and out of traffic trying to do so without bringing too much attention on herself.
She squealed into the parking lot of an abandoned gas station at Weston and Hardison with three minutes to spare. Hers was the only car there; maybe it was a prank. She started calling Mark, let him know what was going on, but if they were watching, they might kill her. Whoever “her” was. Instead, she stuffed her phone into her pocked and got out of the car. She paced nervously around the car, never getting too far from the vehicle.
With a quick glance around confirming she was still alone, she pulled the phone from her pocket and scrolled through her contact’s list, looking for any woman’s name to jump out at her; nothing did.
At 6:59, she was still alone. “Damn.” This was a damn joke, it had to be. The heat rose up her neck and face and she clenched her fists until her nails bit into the tender flesh on her palms. “Shit!” Whoever was playing this joke on her was going to pay for this.
Shannon reached for the door handle just as a big truck came squealing into the parking lot and slid to a halt behind her car, blocking her in; gravel sprayed onto the bumper of her car. Two masked men jumped out of the car and rushed her. She bit back a scream. If she screamed, they might not just kill she, but kill her, too.
“What do you want?” Shannon asked.
One of the men peeled off his mask. “Who the hell are you?”
“Shannon. I got this note on my car.” She handed the man the note from her pocket.
“Damn it, Jim. You tagged the wrong car. Sorry ma’am.”
The two men jumped in their truck and drove off, spraying more gravel as they went.
On the far side of the ring, we have A. Lynne Smithee who is representing the Adult Suspense genre.
Nose for Trouble
Grandma used to tell me if you go looking for trouble, you're sure to find it. The same goes with death. It's all around us, pervading every layer of soil with remnants of every plant and animal that ever lived in this forest. Their scents remain like ghosts, revenants that linger and throw the dogs off their mark.
"Got something, girl?" I ask Gracie.
A German shorthaired pointer, Gracie's been with me since she was two. Nothing can distract her when we’re on the job. The thing that separates her from other K-9s is we've never made a game out of it. Gracie seems to take it seriously, to almost dread that moment before she finds what she's looking for and she gives the sign.
She looks at me with eyes too human for a dog, wags her stub of a tail, then bounds over a small log and pushes deeper into the forest. This isn't the first time something has caught Gracie's interest. Maybe it's the constant rain making it worse, the water seeping into everything and bringing the smell of rot to the surface.
I hope we'll get lucky, that we'll leave without finding her and all this will amount to is a day in the forest with my dog. Grandma had a saying for that, too: pray for sunshine, but bring a raincoat. Water slides off the hood of my slicker in tiny cascades. At least I got that much right.
Gracie darts forward and I almost lose sight of her. She's onto something. A cold breath of dread tickles my neck and sends a frisson through me as sure as if that rainwater had gone down my shirt. I break into a run.
The brush is thicker up ahead. Gracie's upper body disappears into a clump of ferns at the base of a fallen pine. That stub-tail continues to flag back and forth like a prison searchlight.
Hope swells in me when my dog emerges from the plants. She looks back as if to tell me to keep up, then clambers around the fallen pine. The clouds overhead shift to let the sun wink down on us. Coruscating light turns the raindrops into tiny individual kaleidoscopes. I gape at the sight until I remember something else Grandma used to say: hope is your heart's way of denying what your mind already knows.
At the top of a small mound, Gracie has gone still. The tail's patrol is finished, now locked skyward. The muscles in her shoulders are bunched tight as coiled springs. Her nose hovers an inch from a patch of tar-black earth.
"Good girl," I tell her, then give her the sign to stand down.
I make the call and sit on the fallen pine. She licks my face, then looks at me with those baleful caramel eyes, eyes that remind me of my grandmother. I scratch at her ears and we wait together for the forensic team to arrive.
Leave your votes and critiques in the comments below. Again, be respectful of your remarks and try to point out positives
Before we sign off today, I wanted to address the issue a few readers are having with not being able to post comments, or having those comments show up as UNKNOWN even though they have a Google Account. There are several things at play here. First, if you are using the Safari or Chrome browsers they have a known problem with Blogger and you have two choices. Switch to Firefox as a browser (I've never had a problem using it), or change the setting on Safari as illustrated below.
Go to Blogger dashboard.
SETTINGS
USER SETTINGS
Set User Profile = Blogger (instead of Google +)
Save
Hopefully, that will resolve everyone's issues and let the votes/comments reach our contestants.
