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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Jibblies Winners 2010

The results are in, and here are the winners of the 2010 horror-themed Jibblies contest:

First Place
Poetry       "Red Cocoa” by Hannah I. Darling
Fiction       "The Quiet Life” by Jasmine Lane

Second Place
Poetry        “Students” by Angela Finneran
Fiction        “Release” by Patrick Duggan

Third Place
Poetry        “Make Sure the Light is On” by Riley Hamilton
Fiction        “Trip to Iao Valley” by JodiAnn Tomooka

Honorable Mention (unpublished)
Poetry    “Heavy Breathing” by Jonathan Ulrich
              “Once a Year on the Darkest Night” by Elizabeth P. Womack
Fiction    “Late Night Intruder” by Stephanie Neuerburg
              “Polka-Dots” by Carly Schoonhoven

First- and second-place winners in each category will receive a cash prize.

Thank you, as always, to everyone who submitted work. If you submitted an entry but did not win, be on the lookout for our future contests to try with a new piece! If you weren't pleased with the results or if it sounds like fun to read everyone's submissions and come up with writing contests and fliers, consider joining Cognito (details on the right).
 
News: For the first time ever, our “ezine” will become a “real 'zine” when we print small booklets of the winning entries to hand out around campus. Having your work published in this tangible format will be optional in this and future contests (but, hey, who wouldn't want greater circulation and readership, right?). Keep an eye out!

Note: If the large margin on either side of the screen bothers you, simply shrink your browser window to make reading the posts easier. You can also look on the right to find either fiction or poetry, or you can look under "Blog Archives" to read a specific post.

Red Cocoa - First Place Poetry

 by Hannah I. Darling

The sight makes her claws come out
and then melt back into their small, pilose coves.

Like the red buttons the neighbor boy
carefully lays on the stepping stones which
lead from his house to ours—
We too, like to be in between worlds.

Her shoulders rise and slink and we
realize we don’t know the fright of crawling
clandestinely and hush hush
in a stranger’s carpeted world.

The boy and his family
(whispering in their foreign accents)
draw hands with chalky dust on
the driveway.

She tracks red inside,
no noise, onto the white white carpet.

They weren’t red buttons.

Next day it snows on the foreign
neighbors’ chalk hands.
So they build snowmen
with reddish snow hearts.

The mother tells me, in her accent,
that the hands they drew
underneath the snow are now
like god’s.
And the snowmen are all the good people.

A cigarette shakes in her menthol lips.
And hot cocoa drips down
her well bitten fingernails.
She pours red into her steaming cup.

Just for “cheer” she says.

The Quiet Life - First Place Fiction

by Jasmine Lane

     The tap in the kitchen was leaking again.  It did so once in a while, dripping relentlessly against a buildup of plates that had been surviving in the sink for the past week in spite of Martha’s constant nagging that it be kept dish-free.  Ezekiel had tried to comply with her wishes when they had first purchased the house, hoping to placate the woman and end her griping, but after spending his entire day building the houses that other people would find happiness in, he didn’t have the energy to concern himself with the cleanliness of his own dismal and dissatisfying home.
     He sat in the living room now, feet resting atop the coffee table, his comfortable old reclining chair tilted all the way back.  Martha disapproved of the posture; she said it made him look like a layabout, but Zeke was comfortable.  Why shouldn’t he be able to put his feet up while he watched the game?  He had bought himself a six-pack, too, and now held one of the cheap beers in his hand.  He wanted to be drunk tonight, and Martha, who sat scowling at him from her rocking chair, would not deter his determination.
     The kitchen sink was still drip drip dripping away, and Zeke reached for the remote so he could turn the TV volume up a few notches.  A contented smile crossed his face as the distracting noise was successfully drowned out by cable ads and previews for sitcoms that had lost their flavor and originality several seasons ago.  His eyes slid sideways to glance at Martha, and he grumbled, “Don’t glare at me like that.  I’m trying to watch TV, and I can’t hear it over that damned dripping.”  There was only silence.  “Not gonna argue?  ‘Bout damn time you saw it my way.”  Martha still didn’t respond.  Zeke took a sip of his beer.  She was right not to argue.  She had complained time and again about the faucet and how it was wasting water and ruining the sink and keeping her up at night and all manner of other minor irritations, so she had no right to be giving him dirty looks now.  At least they couldn’t hear the thing this way.
     Something about the faucet’s steady drip had always reminded Zeke of a clock, and clocks had never reminded him of anything but his age.  At 42, he felt like his life had passed him by.  Kids didn’t know how good they had it.  Not that they would have cared if they did.  Bobby had failed his math test on Friday, and when Zeke had questioned him about it, he had blamed his failure on his teacher, a Mr. Dodson who Zeke had met with on several occasions and who had assured him that Bobby was less interested in math than he was in Alyssa Hatfield.  Bobby had been grounded for the weekend, but that hadn’t stopped him from trying to sneak out tonight.  But no harm done; a new set of locks on the window had made certain that Bobby wouldn’t be leaving again any time soon.
     Come to think of it, maybe he should have put locks on Samantha’s windows, too.  She was generally well-behaved, but there had been mishaps and Zeke really saw no reason not to nip the whole issue in the bud.  He groaned and tilted himself upright, setting his beer on the coffee table without a coaster.  Once again, he glanced at Martha, daring her to comment.  Once again, she said nothing.  “No complaints?  I’m ruining your table.”  Silence.  “There’ll be a ring there in the morning.”  More silence.  Zeke raised an eyebrow, licked his lips, decided to see how much he could get away with.  “Your mother’s a bitch.”  Martha said nothing.  Zeke grunted, his eyes focused now on a commercial for shampoo, his reason for sitting up half forgotten.  Something to do with locks.  Was the front door broken?  He shoved himself upright and ambled toward the door to check, although he was pretty sure that wasn’t the problem.  Sure enough, everything was in its place.  Zeke grunted again, satisfied, and turned to head back to his chair, but his eyes fell on the partially open garage door.  Right.  The dog had been barking earlier, but it was silent now.  Everything was silent now.
     Zeke closed the door.  The edge of it scraped along the floor and left a streak of dull red-brown in its wake.
     It was dark on the way back to his chair, and Zeke bumped his hip against Martha’s seat.  When he looked at her to apologize, he saw that she had leaned forward, her hand tilted toward the beer can he had left on the coffee table.  Fury flashed through him, bright and hot, and he gripped the back of her chair with one calloused, powerful hand and yanked it back roughly.  Martha flew back into it, and Zeke snarled at her, “You leave my goddamn drink alone, you whore.”  A harsh laugh escaped him as Martha’s wide eyes gazed up at him, her mouth frozen in a startled little “o.”  “Mr. Dodson told me all about it this afternoon.  Tried to apologize, too, the jackass.  Guess it’s my fault; if I’d been home earlier, I would’ve been the one going to meetings about Bobby’s grades.  Too little, too late, I suppose.”  He glanced at Martha, whose head had fallen forward toward her chest.  Scowling, he gave the chair a little shake.  “Are you listening to me, woman?”  He shook again; her head popped back up.  “Better.  And while we’re here, I don’t give a shit about your stupid fucking flowers.  What the hell are primroses?  Sounds like fairy shit to me.”  Martha still wasn’t responding, and Zeke found himself losing steam.  “I guess it doesn’t matter.”
     He shuffled back to his chair.  It took a moment to get settled; his stomach had been growing these days, and his chair was made for a smaller man.  Still, he managed to get comfortable as the game came back on the screen.  The TV shone white against the carpet, the only light in the house, and it glared against Zeke’s pale face as he turned to Martha again; in the half-light, a series of thin red scratches glowed on Zeke’s cheek; neatly mirroring the three deep gashes on Martha’s chest and stomach, only just visible beneath her shredded dress.  It had been yellow before, but now it was red.
     “Yeah,” Zeke said, nodding.  “It doesn’t matter.  The kids are in bed; the dog’s finally quiet; and you don’t have anything to say to me anymore.”  He smiled.  “What do you think of that, Martha?”
     As usual, Martha said nothing.  There was only darkness, the TV, and silence.  Enough silence to drown in.  Zeke threw his feet back onto the table, scooting a kitchen knife to one side as he did.  “You wanna watch the game with me, dear?” he asked gently.  “Good.  I’m glad.  We can talk about all this in the morning, after our guys have won.”  There was a pause before Zeke said, “I love you, honey.”  On the TV, the crowd erupted into applause.


Monday, November 8, 2010

Students - Second Place Poetry

by Angela Finneran

Now, when I sleep at night
I’m awakened by their beady eyes.
Those eyes that question me
            Why, why.
And judge the core of my soul,
each time I walk—
           Through.
                      That.
                                   Door.

Those eyes that sigh and yawn
Excite, and fright.
Those eyes that hug me,
            and give me the finger.

Those eyes attached to that
            Short, Repulsive Figure.

They demand that I deliver
            My beating heart on a plate of
            Mac and Cheese

Those beady eyes.
That crave love and praise;
That may or may not succeed
            Because of me…

When I am desperate to rest,
I can’t.
And never will again.

—Those beady eyes
that possess my dreams,
Growing and defected by the
            spectrum of my sins.


Release - Second Place Fiction

by Patrick Duggan

     “Take a seat Mr. Martin.”
The doctor, Franklin Wright, smiled reassuringly as he gestured to the exam table. Martin shifted forward anxiously, gingerly taking his place on the sinking plastic. He started at the cold.
     “These things are never comfortable, are they doc?”
     Franklin smiled. “Afraid not, Mr. Martin. The cold help keeps down the risk of infection. It's for everyone's safety.”
     Martin gave the doctor a sardonic grin. “Well, let's get on with it. Get out the needles and knives.”
     Dr. Franklin gave him a scolding look. “You know we don't use anything so barbaric. Don't be dramatic. This is just a final exam, to make sure you’re healthy and disease-free.”
     Martin leaned back, lying down on the table with his hands laced behind his head. “Right. Don't want me infecting anybody with something nasty. I guess that means this'll be the last time I see you then, huh doc?”
     Dr. Franklin patted him on the shoulder. “I'm afraid so, Mr. Martin. Don't fret; I'm sure there are many more cold exam tables in your future.”
     Martin took a deep breath. “I guess so. I guess so.”
     Dr. Franklin rolled up Martin's sleeve. The starched orange fabric crumpled and compressed, leaving the man’s arm bare. He applied a tourniquet, quickly and efficiently.
     “What are you going to do first?” Dr. Franklin asked. He had learned it was best to keep their minds off the pain. They were supposed to be happy, after all.
     “I'm going to go home. Spend time with my wife, hug my kids. Just be with my family, you know? Do you have any family Dr. Franklin?”
     Dr. Franklin forced a smile as he withdrew the needle. He moved away from the table and inserted the blood into a testing chamber. “Nothing for it now but to wait.” He turned around to face Mr. Martin. “My wife is, unfortunately, no longer with me, but I have two sons. They mean the world to me.”
     Martin smiled and nodded. “There's no other feeling like it is there. Being a father?”
     Dr. Franklin pulled off his glasses and began cleaning them idly with his shirt while nodding. “Nothing like it in the world, Mr. Martin.”
     “And now I get to see them. Go home and see my kids. Marissa, my wife, she didn't believe, but I knew they'd make the right decision. I knew they'd find me innocent.”
      Dr. Martin finished cleaning his glasses and put them back on. “Nothing short of a miracle Mr. Martin. Nothing short of a miracle.”
     The testing machine finished its work. A slow, monotonous red light began blinking on and off. Dr. Franklin moved over to the machine.
     Martin was nervous. “What does that mean? Do I have something?”
     Dr. Franklin smiled. “Just a small cancer, Mr. Martin. Nothing serious. Let me see....” He began paging through a small binder of medicine tables on the counter. Eventually, he stopped. “REX23.” He opened a cupboard and pulled out a small, pink vial. “Here it is. You should be right as rain in a just a moment, Mr. Martin.” Dr. Franklin inserted the vial into a syringe, flicked the needle to make sure there were no bubbles. “Hold still Mr. Martin. In a few minutes, this will all be over. You'll be able to go see your family.” The tourniquet was still on. Dr. Franklin gave Mr. Martin his injection, and then solemnly put the needle away, still smiling.
     Jacob Martin was declared dead 30 seconds later.
     A voice came on over the intercom. “Dr. Franklin, is the procedure complete?”
     The Doctor moved over to the voice panel on the wall. “Jacob Martin has passed on. He didn't suspect a thing; he went peacefully.”
     “Good work, Doctor. We can at least show them a little kindness before their release.”
     “Of course.”
     A few seconds later the door slid open again, and a young woman in an orange jumpsuit looked in nervously. “Take a seat Mrs. West.”


Make Sure the Light is On - Third Place Poetry

by Riley Hamilton

As the stars are reviled
Some still hang behind
October clouds, Angels
Descend down, dancing, twinkling like
Headlights through costal fog.
Such Spirits that harp and strum in
The periphery with falling red leaves.
Their voices intermingle with
Children laughing, peeking out from
Behind masks and bushes, running.
Except for the
Child chubby on
Corn syrup and MSG’s,
Doped up on Ritalin or
Antidepressants.
All the help we have given him
Counseling sessions, food stamps
Culminating in a break even,
No change, same problems.
It’s Halloween, so smile boy,
Why should you care that
Mother’s eyes are black
Father’s eyes are slack, drunk.
It’s a glorious night to
Beg from neighbors, just
Make sure the light is on and
Keep an eye for
Hidden razor blades, and overly
Friendly old men.
A police officer sits under
Every single street light but
The dark spaces in between hold the memory of
Women raped, murdered,
Men stabbing at each other in
Frustration, the
Taint of
Twisted reality, thoughts and morals.

So, think hard.
Why do angels dance here,
Circling with the leaves?

They must be the fallen variety,
Harder to spot than devils.


Trip to Iao Valley - Third Place Fiction

by JodiAnn Tomooka

    “Are you ready?”
    “I don’t think we should be here,” I said.
    “Come on. It’s just one time,” replied David. “Just to say we did it.”
    He climbed over the yellow, rusted gate and waited for everyone to follow. I looked around. Next to me, Alice and Janie had their arms locked in fear; Tyler and Andrew looked wary; Nicole quietly muttered something to herself; Laura stood with one hand in her pocket, the other in her mouth, biting her nails.
    “Come on guys. It’s not like anything bad is going to happen,” said David. “We’re just going to take a look around.”
    “But it’s haunted,” whispered Janie, as she dug herself further into Alice’s side.
    “That’s the whole point. Lots of people come here at night and nothing ever happens to them. We’re just having fun.”
    Tyler and Laura hopped over the gate, knowing that David the Daredevil would never give up until we were all on the other side.
    “Just this once,” said Tyler.
    “Ok. Who’s next?” David asked.
    Slowly, Nicole climbed over the gate followed by Andrew. Alice, Janie, and I remained on the safe side. David stared at us.
    “Would you rather be alone, three girls in the middle of nowhere, or with the rest of us and three guys to protect you?”
    “I’d rather be with the group,” exclaimed Janie as she, too, made her way over the gate. Alice and I looked at each other with the same hopeless expression. Stay with the group or be left alone. We slowly climbed over the gate and joined the rest of them.
    “Ok. Everyone has flashlights? Good. Let’s go!”
    One by one, the glow of the flashlights illuminated the street in front of us. From here on, the beam from my hefty flashlight was my best friend. Once we were prepared both physically and mentally, we started to climb up the hill, depending solely on each other. It was a beautiful night. The sky was clear, and the stars shone brightly. The air was mildly cold but nothing unbearable.
   After about a minute of silence, Laura asked, “Do you know the stories about Iao Valley?”
   “Yes!” cried Janie. “The one about the big battle between the Hawaiians that happened here. Bodies clogged the river and turned the water red with blood!”
   “Oh, Janie, look the water’s red!” joked David as he shone the light over the railing to the river below.
   “Shut up, David! That’s not funny!”
   “Shhh. You’re being so loud. The spirits will hear you!” said Laura playfully.
   “Nooooooo,” moaned Janie as she buried her way between Alice and I. Janie was the superstitious, spiritual one in the group.
   “Well going back to what Laura was saying, isn’t there a story about the side of this mountain too?” asked Tyler.
   “Yeah,” I replied. “A plane crashed here many years ago. People say that late at night you can hear the passengers screaming and feel the heat from the flames.”
   Andrew tilted his head upwards and leaned closer to the mountain. “I don’t hear or feel anything.”
   “It’s just a story,” said Tyler.
   Janie retaliated, “You don’t mess around with ancient Hawaiian stories. They’re real, you know, so can we please get out of here before the night marchers come?”
   “There’s no night marchers here,” said Andrew.
   “Yeah, there are,” said Laura. “These restless souls of ancient warriors carry torches and march in mostly sacred places. You can hear them beating their drums and chanting, ready to go to war. Iao Valley is a sacred Hawaiian site.”
   “You can’t look them in the eye, right?” asked Alice.
   “Yeah. If you do, they’ll take you and make you one of them forever.”
   Nicole laughed. “So what do you do if you see them?”
   “You’re supposed to lie on the ground face down, put your hands on your head, breathe slowly, and try not to make noise.”
   Nicole started laughing again. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”
   Janie, Alice, Laura and I stared at her with wide eyes. “Don’t disrespect the ancient stories,” I said. “Especially here. The Hawaiians truly believed this stuff.”
   “Ok, sorry,” apologized Nicole. “It’s just kind of funny.”
   “We’re almost there guys,” David said, averting our attentions back to the walk.
   We continued to walk up the winding road. With each turn in the road, my heart leapt out of my chest. My eyes continued to dart around, ready to spot any sign of danger. I believed deeply in the stories, which is why I didn’t want to be here. We made it halfway up the hill when suddenly David’s flashlight went out.
   “What the heck?” he said. He hit the flashlight against his hand, hoping it would turn on again. Then, Nicole’s light went out too.
   “I told you not to disrespect them!” I whispered fiercely.
   “Relax,” said David. “It’s just the batteries. I forgot to put new ones in before we came.” He took Nicole’s flashlight and checked the batteries. Dead too.
   “It’s ok. We still have six flashlights left,” said Nicole. She moved her way to stand by Janie and Alice, and David walked over to share lights with Tyler. We continued to walk further up the hill when a gust of cold wind blew past us. Suddenly, a high piercing scream filled the air. I whipped my head around to see Alice grasping her shirt where her heart lay underneath and Janie clutching Alice’s arm for dear life, both of them staring wide eyed at Nicole who was standing on the side laughing out loud. Apparently, Nicole had grabbed Janie from behind and pulled her back. Realizing it was Nicole who had done it, Janie slapped her arm and began yelling profanities at her.
   “Shut up before someone hears us,” warned Laura strictly. Then, another scream filled the air. Everyone looked towards Janie, but her widened eyes and mid-sentence stance assured us that she was not the one who had shouted. We began looking around the group, attempting to find the culprit, when several other lower pitched screams reverberated off the sides of the mountain. This time, we were certain they did not come from any of us. At this realization, the eight of us sprinted down the hill, back where we came from. Then, each of the flashlights extinguished one by one. I pressed the on and off switch multiple times but to no avail. Complete darkness surrounded us.
   I swung my arm to the side in hopes of grabbing hold of someone I knew, but instead felt something grab my legs and pull me down face first. I tilted my head back to find Laura with her right arm firmly grasping my right leg. She had tripped and fallen, pulling me down with her.
   “Are you ok?” I asked.
   “Yeah,” she replied. “Sorry about taking you down too. I just grabbed whatever was in front of me.”
   “It’s alright. Where’s everyone else?” I desperately scanned the road, scrunching my eyes in the darkness trying to find my friends. I tried to listen for footsteps, but all I found was silence.
   “They must’ve run ahead,” I said, trying to keep myself calm. “We better go before they leave us here.” I pushed myself up and pulled Laura off of the ground. Together, we darted straight to the cars. We were almost there when I made out a dark figure standing on the side of the road in front of us. I slowed to a jog and put my arm out to stop Laura. “Do you see that over there?”
   Laura’s body stiffened next to mine. I couldn’t make out the figure, but my feet refused to move any closer. My heart beat against my ribs as though it wanted to escape its bone cell. Laura moved her head forward slightly and suddenly grasped my arm. I half jumped at the surprise.
   “It’s Janie!” Laura said as she began to run ahead to meet her. As I moved closer to the figure, I made out a small girl with a ponytail and a bulky purse hanging from her shoulder. That’s Janie, I thought. I ran up to them and watched as Laura peaked around at Janie’s face. She was standing with her face towards the river, her eyes as wide as the full moon above us. Laura and I followed her gaze and found what looked to be a dam, with logs sticking out, in the middle of the river several feet from where we were standing. The water was unusually dark. I turned back to face Janie. “What’s wrong?”
   Janie merely raised her arm and pointed at the dam. I followed her finger to the black mass hindering the river from flowing, when suddenly I realized what it was. My hand instinctively covered my mouth as I gasped in both disgust and horror. The objects sticking out weren’t logs, but arms, and the dam was no regular dam but a collection of bodies. The faint smell of rust filled my nose as I realized why the water was so dark. I pulled away from them, trying to recompose myself.
   Laura, finally understanding what happened, began pulling the frozen Janie away from the river, back towards the cars. “We need to get out of here now.”
   Without another word, the three of us made our way to the bottom of the hill and found our cars right where we had left them. However, something was different. David’s driver door was wide open and the hood was propped up. Next to his, Tyler’s car was the same as usual, except it displayed four large scratches running from the front bumper to the back tire. Both vehicles were empty. I frantically scanned the area, looking for some sort of movement. Laura, who had made her way to David’s truck, cried out, “They were here!”
I ran up to meet her but refused to look inside. “His keys are in the ignition,” she said. “Alice and Nicole’s bags are in here too…”
   “We need to leave, now!” Janie shouted, her voice shaking.
   “I’m not leaving until we find everyone else!” I yelled.
   “Just get in the car,” said Laura. She climbed in the driver’s seat and turned the key, but the truck wouldn’t start.
   Suddenly, a rhythmic beating sounded through the trees and off the side of the mountain. Three of our heads whipped in the direction of the beating. A line of glowing torches bobbing up and down made its way in our direction. The drumming grew louder and the faint sound of chanting could be heard.
   “Get down!” whispered Laura. The three of us quickly fell to the ground, our faces pressed firmly into the gravel, our fingers locked on top of our heads. I tried to slow my breathing, but my heart’s frenzied palpitations made it hard to think. The drumming and chanting grew louder until the sound was directly in front of us. I closed my eyes tightly and prayed that they would leave us alone.
   For a moment, I thought we were in the clear as the sounds died away. Then, I heard Janie’s high-pitched scream fill the night air. My eyelids flew open, and I tried to glance to the side of me, but I couldn’t see anything. A couple of seconds later, Laura yelled out in fear. My heart beat faster and faster as I knew I was next. I shut my eyes again and pressed myself closer to the ground. A hard jab to my side indicated they were over me. I heard a low grunt a few inches from my head.
   This is only a dream, this is only a dream, I thought to myself. It was only a dream.




Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Ed Versluis Contest Winners

All right, everyone! The results of our 6+ hours of judging are in, and the winners are:

Fiction
1st place: “The Picture of Violet” by Hannah I. Darling
2nd place: “Mae and the Judge” by Richard Balzer   
3rd place: “A Notebook for Every Town” by Corynn Del Core
Published Honorable Mention:    “Missed Connection” by Jamey Strathman
Unpublished Honorable Mention:  “Air” by Karren Busch
Unpublished Honorable Mention: “Death stopped by for some coffee today” by Katherine Roy
Unpublished Honorable Mention: “The End" and "Nothing Yet”  by Jamey Strathman

Creative Nonfiction
1st place: “Edwards Air Force Base” by Lorene Farnsworth
2nd place: “The Blackberry Man” by Devon Williams
3rd place: “This is Earth’s Body” by Jerred North

Poetry
1st place:     “Dry Spell” by Trisha Castillo
2nd place: “Airplanes” by Zeke Hudson
3rd place: “Several Cries Over Winter in Carlsbad, New Mexico” by Tyler Lacy
Published Honorable Mention: “Entropy” by Zeke Hudson
Unpublished Honorable Mention: "Thoughts at the End of the Year" by Katherine Brafford

Keep in mind that the judging was done blind, without us knowing the authors of the pieces we were reading. Minimal alterations were done to the submissions before publishing them here.

Winners of the 7th Annual Ed Versluis Memorial Writing Contest received cash prizes (1st place - $100, 2nd place - $50) and surprise gifts (3rd place).

There were some extremely impressive, entertaining, and poignant pieces submitted to this contest. If you didn't submit a piece or submitted one that did not win, please send in pieces for next year's contests--and if you don't agree with the results, the solution is to join the club! Details are on the right under "What's Going On?"

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Edwards Air Force Base (First Place - Creative Nonfiction)

by Lorene Farnsworth

I could hear the squeaking of hamster wheels before I even got all the way through the backyard. If I was a stranger and didn’t know they were in cages, I probably wouldn’t have ventured any further than the back door of our house. The cages were multi-colored and Frank had affixed them to the two longer walls of the garage. There were ten across, five vertical, fifty on each wall; which made one hundred blue, green and red hamster cages in all. There were slides and tunnels and little doors, water bottles and feeders hung in every wing and hamster wheels abounded, complete with every one of Mom’s little round compact mirrors, which Frank had mounted on the wall next to every wheel, just in case the jogging hamster needed to check out how tight his buns were getting after a day at the gym. Every cage was connected, so that the hamsters had free run to visit their friends and families. 
 
Frank told us the drugs were to help his back and our mother told us that the drugs were to cure Dad’s chronic ‘hiatal hernias.’ I recently looked up the spelling for hiatal and an online article informed me the condition involves: ‘heartburn, nausea, and regurgitation.’ Smelling a rat, I typed in my father’s physical symptoms at that time and found a far different condition; it looks to me that my father was suffering from what they call, ‘chronic pilonidal abscesses.’ I thought heartburn, nausea and regurgitation didn’t sound at all like something that would require the use of a thick, rubber donut to sit down on in the car. The only thing I can think is that my mother must’ve been uncomfortable with the word ‘abscess.’ I can’t say as I blame her, for it does conjure up some nasty images. Simply put, Dad needed to keep his weight down and every time he didn’t the dread pilonidal abscess would emerge, inevitably followed by the dull, red,

rubber donut and an escalated dose of Frank’s nasty attitude, caused in part by the pharmaceutical amphetamines he was able to obtain from the hospital dispensary where he worked.

Since our father was not one to keep his unhappiness to himself, whenever we saw the rubber donut my sister and I would try to make ourselves scarce, which is not an easy task, living in a military base house. At first, we were glad to see Frank find a drug that helped, but we quickly realized that, although he was losing a lot of weight, and apparently was canker free; amphetamines didn’t seem to have much of a calming effect on him. In fact, he was worse than we had ever seen him. Always in motion, grinding his teeth, sniffing constantly, Frank became more nervous and volatile than ever and we longed for the days when all he had was a butt canker and a foul mood that might go away when the canker did. Ironically the drugs had turned our father’s whole being into one giant, unstable, butt canker. 

Edwards Air Force Base is a place so dismal that it is only surpassed by the Azores and certain parts of Georgia. And that’s where we went to live, after being lulled into a false sense of security by the four, comparatively strife free, years outside of London, England. Edwards is not one of those bases that people are falling all over themselves to live in, not like Germany or England. Everybody wants to live in Germany and England because they speak English and they obligingly sell you cool shit like beer steins and figurines of the Royal Family. 

Diane and I tried to stay outside as much as possible when Frank was raving, but that was hard, because outside sucked. Outside was a desert, with snakes and spiders, all of whom were vying to kill us from minute to minute; outside was 110 degrees, with no shade trees and kids

who hated you because you were new and you talked funny. Outside were Air Force lifers who hurled their infants into the deep end of the pool to toughen them up, outside was country music and guys who greased their hair back with so much goop that it you could smell it cooking in the sun when they walked by. Once, Diane and I watched our 16 year old next door neighbor run out of her house screaming and waving her arms. The front of her ruffled midriff blouse was on fire. I was three years younger than that girl, but I knew as soon as I saw her that she must have leaned over the gas stove when she was cooking. We stood and watched the guy from across the street put her out, taking her down and embracing her from behind, rolling her face first, back and forth into the brittle, yellow lawn. He finally smothered the flames, but she was burned enough for the ambulance to come, so I tried not to laugh at how stupid she was.

There is always a water shortage in the desert and for the four years we lived on base, no one was allowed to water their lawn, and we were even asked to conserve on toilet flushing. The military police patrolled the base, shining their silver, metal flashlights into people’s yards at night, looking for any signs of a suspiciously green lawn. However, my father’s racing metabolism was dead set on procuring an English style country garden in the Mojave Desert. Possessing the boundless energy pharmaceuticals lent him, he went ahead and threw up an eight foot high wood fence around our entire backyard, and Diane and I handed him the nails and tried not to look like we were thinking anything about how fucking crazy he was. The whole project took him only two days since he didn’t have to sleep, or pay attention to any pesky child labor laws, and when it was completed Frank watered his back yard triumphantly, free of any prying eyes- and that’s when the madness started. We began driving up weekly into the mountains to

visit the state parks, where Frank wrenched up small forests worth of conifers and ferns to transplant to our barren backyard, and every morning at three am, he went out back and watered his lawn till dawn. No big deal, he was awake. 

Soon our backyard was an English bower, with bushy foliage and climbing vines and little benches. Our dog, Bobby, named after the Scottish terrier who spent the rest of its life lying 

on top of its master’s grave, (dream on, Frank) lived in a state of the art doghouse, complete with a canopied veranda. The canopy went up after Dad noticed one afternoon that Bobby was getting sun in his eyes as he sat in front of his new doghouse. I suggested sunglasses, but Dad didn’t 

have much of a sense of humor in those days, so I was back to holding nails, helping him build a doghouse veranda canopy. This idyllic life could have continued along indefinitely, barring war or transfers, but for the hamsters.

The hamsters had seemed like a great idea at the time, but I’m sure that’s what the assassin thought when he shot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, and began World War I. Frank got it into his head that Diane and I needed more responsibility, maybe we had dropped a nail or something, I don’t remember. The gist of it was that he thought the ownership of a couple of small pets might teach us how to take care of something outside our small, slovenly, self-involved little persons. So, sometime in July of 1963, we piled into the car and drove the thirty miles into Bakersfield because we desperately needed two hamsters. The hamsters were cute, we liked them and they liked us, as far as we could tell, and Diane and I actually got to play with them for a few days. We fed them and cleaned their cages and proved all around that we weren’t the little sociopaths that Frank thought we were. Everything was going along well until Dad decided he needed to make the hamsters a built-in cage in the garage. It was done by morning,  

we heard him hammering and cursing long into the night, and the next day when we went out to look at the cage, it was a thing of beauty. 

Frank had outdone himself, it was a rodent theme park, we wished we were small enough to go inside and play with them and as it turned out, shrinking to their size would be the only way we ever would. For the hamsters were in the domain of Frank now. He had enjoyed building the cage for them, he had loved playing with them, and he decided that we could wait a few years to learn responsibility after all. Just like that, our father had repossessed our hamsters. 

Since the cages allowed the hamsters a rich social life, it didn’t take long before there were twelve hamsters, then twenty-five, then sixty-five, and so on, and infinitum was only a matter of time. For each new batch of hamsters we couldn’t play with, Frank built another set of cages, still all connecting, complete with all the cunning little doors, slides and tunnels.  Frank seemed not to be getting the connection between the open access hamster thoroughfare and the exploding hamster population, and he was behaving as if a garage full of hamsters in the Mojave Desert would go unnoticed by the local authorities indefinitely. Near the end of the summer, there were exactly 100 cages in the garage, fifty on each of the long walls, covering every inch of wall from ceiling to floor, ten cages wide, five cages vertically. The hamster count hovered somewhere around 300, depending upon on how many births there were that week. And that’s when the rattlers started coming to call.

Frank’s high fence kept most of the marauding snakes out and he managed to beat to death those hamster-crazed enough to-somehow- jump over an eight foot fence. By then, even Frank had realized the hamsters were getting to be a problem, so he started giving them away to the local kids, who of course began losing them and letting them escape into the desert, doing their part to attract the drooling rattlers to the base faster than greedy old bachelors to a pancake breakfast. 

Soon, everyone in the neighborhood had serious snake problems and everyone knew just who was responsible for it; since ‘their little bastards’ had promptly turned Frank in, and it wasn’t long before the military police came to our door.  The one thing I miss about living in the military is that you’re not allowed to be crazy. Well, you can be a little crazy, but not to the point where your craziness starts spurting out stuff like hamsters and rattlesnakes. The military will shut your crazy ass down, which is what happened to Frank that day. The MPs gave him two choices, which I thought was nice of them, considering. Choice number one was to put his herd of hamsters into the car the next morning, drive them back to the pet store in Bakersfield and drop them off. Or, choice number two was: ‘We will come in and shoot them, one by one, tomorrow evening.’ The next morning, as we were driving into Bakersfield, I was relieved to see that Frank was using his red rubber donut again, so maybe that back medication hadn’t worked out so well for him after all.

Dry Spell (First Place - Poetry)

by Trisha Castillo

we’re back to the
same question again
pulled out from where it
was sleeping in the
backseat of the car
sometimes it’s easier
to talk about things
while staring out the
window at the world
beyond the concrete
but neither of us
know exactly what
to say or how to solve
this problem racing
forward alongside the
yellow painted lines
and so we just focus
on the surroundings
and search for
insight in the fields
and the fruit stands

The Picture of Violet (First Place - Fiction)

by Hannah I. Darling

On my mantel there is a photograph of a woman I have met only once. 
 
She is sitting in the middle of a tall grass field wearing a white sun hat and holding a child in her arms, their backs to the camera and the sun sinking behind the hills. 

On the rare occasion I have company over, I lie and say she is my sister, then promptly change the subject.
 

 
Last night, I was sitting on the floor by the fire, grading paper after paper. The wind was soft as it crawled around the house and the weeks have been snowy. I’ve spent months racing around, keeping too busy.  

I dropped the papers to the ground, exhausted and looked up at the photograph on my mantel. Then, absentmindedly, I pulled out a photo album from the top drawer of this ugly, pale green chest with big white flowers on it. My mother had hand painted it when I was a child, so somewhere along the line it ended up with me.

And the photo album was as old as the chest. Mostly of family vacations, birthdays, bigger events. But toward end there was a picture of my dad sitting on top of a car, writing on a notepad. He was smiling. And it hardly looked like him. He had been quiet most my life, a large distance between him and the world. Like he was only made up of mysterious pieces and no one got to turn them over, see the other side.  

I sat there, flipping through the album. We had lived on the coast of Maine when I was about eight. I didn’t remember much of those years, but I could recall one morning when I woke up to a lot of screaming downstairs.

My two older sisters had snuck out to a party at a senior boy’s house, Billy something. They hadn’t come home until early that morning. Naturally, mom was doing the screaming. What was especially bad was Vivian had came home with only her long jacket on and nothing much underneath, except her wrist brace since she had hurt it at cheerleading. I went downstairs, wanting just to sneak into the kitchen, but mom grabbed me by the arm and told dad to take me down to the beach. I was eager, it was never just the two of us.  

We walked since we lived so close and dad didn’t say much of anything on the way, just chewed on a toothpick, like he routinely did. We got to the water and he sat on the rocks while I ran to the shore. I remember how the beach could make your hair gritty and face all salty in just a couple minutes. 

I sat next to him eventually, and dug my toes and fingers into the sand. He was writing in a little notebook he always carried around.

“What are you doing Dad?” I asked.

“Oh nothing, just jottin’ down some things.”

“Bout what?”

“...this and that, nothing much really.”

I told him I would tell him what I had written in my journal that week if he would tell me what he was jottin’ down. This made him laugh, which surprised me. In my mind it was a pretty good offer.

“Okay, Jack. Well, I’m writing about the laughing man. The laughing man who sits in the sky and swings down midday to give you a tap on the shoulder and tell you to slow it down. And you shouldn’t ignore him Jack, cause he’ll get old someday. Remember he laughs when you say, ‘It has to be now, I want it now.’ He can teach you patience, Jack, but he doesn’t want you to loose your child-ness either.” 

I told him that was a pretty good story about the laughing man and that maybe he should visit mom ‘cause she wasn’t so patient and he laughed again. I told him what I had written wasn’t as good ‘cause it was just about how Vivian had played baseball with me, even though her wrist was hurt. He said that was definitely as good, maybe even better.
 

I let the album fall shut and looked back up to the mantel.


I had gotten the call one afternoon in the spring and since it was a slow season we arranged for a time the next day. I packed my equipment into the truck. 

She had given me directions to her father’s ranch twenty miles away, and as I drove I noticed the last of the snow on the hills and knew the sunlight would be perfect. When I arrived, a dark haired woman was standing under a maple with a young girl, about three years old. She wore a long yellow dress and they were eating a bag of peanuts, the kind with a shell.

“You must be Violet, I’m Jack,” I said.

“Thanks for coming. This is my daughter, Cadence.” I noticed the unusual inflection of her voice and the toddler’s long eyelashes. She dusted the salt off her fingers as she spoke.

“If you want to set up, it may take me a while to round up my father. I want to try and get at least one shot of the whole family.” 

As she went inside with the child, I chose a spot under the maple tree where the peanut shells sprinkled the grass. I remember the smell of sunscreen and soil. Beside the swing on the porch was a pile of books, ruined by weather. I heard Violet turn on the television for Cadence and I got a glimpse of Violet’s father, a tall old man with a mustache, wearing a blackened cowboy hat. And I heard Violet gently try to persuade him to change into a nice shirt for the portraits. I remember the lows and highs of her voice and how I wished to hear her sing or read to her daughter. Her father sat down heavily at the kitchen table.

“Violet, turn on some coffee, will you?” he said.

“Dad, the photographer is waiting outside.”

The man walked outside to where I was standing. 

“Why don’t you come on in here, just for a moment,” he said.

I was confused, but followed him. He pointed to a chair at the table and I sat down.

“Dad, what are you doing?”

She turned to me and apologized.

“Just sit down Violet and give ma a damn minute.”

The man took a loud breath, but spoke just above a whisper.

“I know why you want to take these pictures…‘cause I’m gettin’ old.”

His laugh turned into a bad fit of coughing. 

“...It’s been rough between me and you these last few years, but there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you...Do you remember that old yellow house your mother and I lived in when you were little?  Do you remember that night one summer when you came into my study because it was so damn hot and you couldn’t sleep? I carried you around outside and you demanded that I point out the constellations since the stars were so bright… And I hummed that Neil Young song into your ear as you got sleepy. You asked me how a river could get blinded, and I told you Blind River was just a place in Canada and it could see just fine.” 

He paused and struggled to clear his throat- perhaps of the dust that collects on a thing never told. It was uncomfortable, like I shouldn’t have been there. He glanced at Cadence who was slouched in front of the TV, toying with a thread from the sofa. And he went on. 

“You had on some sort of candy bracelet and you had only eaten off the purple ones. Somehow, I remember that. It looked too tight, so I stretched it off your wrist and put it in my pocket. We walked back and forth along the driveway for an hour. There was that cricket noise and right there under the big black sky, I couldn’t believe that I was standing in this world with you. Of all the things, how could it be that I got you...

I looked up at the house and saw your mom, sitting in the window, watching us and crying a sort of beautiful cry. What I wanted to tell you Violet, is this hour has been my dearest hour.”  

The farm was quiet and the detergent commercial on the T.V. sounded fuzzy. Violet reached for a tissue. I said nothing, still unsure why the man invited me in. He stood up, abruptly.  

“Ready for my close up, sir,” the man said. 

I followed him outside.

After a few test shots, I had Violet’s father lean against the maple. He didn’t smile, but his eyes had a readiness. And for some reason, I feared this readiness. The peanut shells crunched as he adjusted his stance and the girls came out then. Violet joined her dad with Cadence on her hip and her dark hair flowed over her daughter’s shoulders. She kissed the small girl on the head and briefly squeezed her father’s hand. He nodded and looked out toward the sky.

In Violet’s face, I saw the fragility of a daughter and the instinct of a mother. I thought she wasn’t torn between the two roles, nor confused by them. Just aware of them, maybe for the first time ever.  She gave me a look, maybe of contentment. 

Cadence began to whine and I went to assist Violet with the bottles and toys in her car. In the fuss of the moment, her father limped to the barn and sat down against it, facing the valley and creek below. He removed his cowboy hat and rested it on his face. 

The neighbors strolled over a few minutes later, chatting and bearing cookies. Hellos were exchanged and once the situation was realized, perplexed and hysterical phone calls were made. I remember the maples at the ranch whirring in the wind.  

I watched Violet take a deep breath and close her eyes for a few seconds. She lifted Cadence and shakily walked over to the tall grass field where they sat down. The ambulance’s siren echoed off the hills and somehow Violet kept Cadence calm, facing away and pointing to something in the distance. 

I slipped into the background then, and a heaviness took me. I had been witness to courageous and timely reconciliation that day, as complete and pure as it comes. And this is how I imagined his death…

He took in a breath and felt the dirt driveway under his bare feet that long ago summer night and Violet’s sticky hands around his neck. He listened to his own humming and felt his daughter’s heart beating against his own. And then, he saw Violet’s mother in the window as he breathed out his last breath. 

I stood back for some time and looked out at Violet and her daughter, watching the things that contour a family. Eventually, I took what would be my last shot and packed my equipment into the truck.  
         


Weeks later when I developed Violet’s film, I quit photography and gave all my time to teaching. I looked up the address of the ranch in the phonebook and mailed the photographs to Violet. All, but one.  

The Blackberry Man (Second Place - Creative Nonfiction)

by Devon Williams

When I was young my parents used to visit this old lady Sally, and would often take me to her house with them. I remember driving out to her house deep in the country, wondering to myself why they spent any time with this creepy old lady. As we would pull into Sally’s drive way she would be standing there, arms folded across her flowered muumuu that was sewn from a 1970’s tablecloth, waiting for me to arrive. Waiting to pull me out of the car, squeeze my small cheeks, and threaten me with the blackberry man; this had been her normal routine since my parents started visiting her. 
 
Sally had crinkly leather skin with deep black bags sagging under her cold eyes. The black under her eyes was extenuated by her carelessly placed forest green eye shadow that didn’t do justice for her face. When she would hug me and give me smooches I would be engulfed by the mixture of her sweet pungent perfume and the smell from the pack of cigarettes she had smoked that morning, and every morning 60 years prior. Her thin old lips were smudged with a deep crimson lipstick and felt like old wet paper that was left  out to dry in the sun, as they were pressed against my unwilling cheek. As she cradled me her boneless body would swallow my small frame. Then in her gravelly voice she would half say, half cough, “watch out for the blackberry man," and then chuckle, cough, chuckle, and cough.

I think Sally was married to the blackberry man. The blackberry man had long dark hair that was turning grey, with patches of bald spots near the top of his head. A deep scar ran diagonally from above his eyebrow across his sun withered cheek. I assumed he got this gash from running through the black berry bushes he attended too. His scratch covered arms where covered by his brown flannel that he never changed out of. 
The black berry man got his name because he would throw bad kids over his shoulder, carry their screaming flailing bodies to the edge of the black berry patch and throw them into the waiting bushes. These weren’t average blackberry bushes as they covered a large field, and had been allowed to grow uncontrollably for countless years. In the middle of the patch, laid a spot where all of the thorns and bushes had been flattened down. In this spot laid the bodies of hundreds of other bad kids who had met a similar fate. Either bleeding out from the gashes from the thick razorblade thorns, or starving to death trapped in a cage of poisonous blackberry bushes. 

Although threatened with being hucked into the infamous blackberry bushes; for some reason the blackberry man decided to spare me. Although Sally consistently reminded me of the blackberry bushes I never found myself in the blackberry man’s strong grasp. Instead he stayed in the house during my parents visits, and I never really met the blackberry man. I later found out that her husband wasn’t a blackberry man, and that this monstrous person didn’t exist. The truth is the blackberry man died of cancer within months of my parents visiting Sally. Regardless she continued to threaten me after his death by saying, “Watch out for the blackberry man, he is going to get you, and throw you in the bushes.”

Airplanes (Second Place - Poetry)

by Zeke Hudson

Don't look: there are airplanes everywhere.
If we crossed oceans it was all to get back to the continent--
you know, the one our fathers grew.
Funny how these things come back to haunt us.
The sky is not so filled with buzzing now that the days are darker.
I once reached for your cup but you gave me your hand
and we ran like crickets somewhere into the distance
to escape the roaring overhead.
It's not so much a sickness as a mistake:
and we never called it a war; we called it the hum,

static, background music, something to keep our ears busy.
At the factories, women smiled with white teeth and sooty faces.
You said your mom quit her job there. It was the people.
She said they hummed while they worked.

Mae and the Judge (Second Place - Fiction)

by Richard Balzer

The dusk covered Caddy pulled up to the roadside dinner. Exiting the hold-over from the good old days of good old cars was a man of considerable heft. The Judge himself was a hold-over from the days of the good old boy network; he needed the “land yacht” to get around to survey his “domain.”

He pushed into the dinner in with his typical air of arrogance and self importance. Mae, the waitress, every ready with warm words and a warmer smile picked up a menu and sauntered over towards the Judge. He waived her off with an arrogant flip of his hand and said, “The usual, toast and coffee” and sourly added “and heavy on everything. The last time I was in here the only thing heavy was the burn on the toast and the grounds in the coffee.” Mae simply smiled and went about her task. Mae had just sold the diner last week and was on her way to sweet retirement. She had been verbally abused by the judge for more years than she would want to admit. Since today was the last day she would ever have to put up with this she went about her task without the resentment that had been there during other visits by the self important man.

Her mind worked like it was whipping up butter in the churn on a hot Saturday afternoon. She spread the butter on the toast as thick as lard on a stuck water pump, hoping to speed on the coronary the judge was likely to have at any moment. Next, she piled on the orange marmalade thick enough to keep a bottle fly busy for ten years. Coffee, hot enough to boil a crawdad and sweet enough to encourage an onset of type 2 diabetes completed the judge’s usual. She delivered the order with a smile on her lips as sweet as the coffee, knowing the judge wouldn’t complain as she had followed his instructions like she was an innocent Yankee, caught in the county’s speed trap and fined in his midnight kangaroo court. Mae swayed to the country and blues number that was playing on the broken down radio sitting on the counter by the day old donuts and sat on a stool behind the counter to wait. She wanted to have a good place to watch from and enjoy what was surely to follow.

The thick layer of marmalade slid off the toast and onto the Colonel Sanders' goatee that the judge was so proud of. It dripped off his face and piled onto both his white, three piece, summer only sear sucker suit and the table; the pile growing to resemble cumulous cloud floating by on a lazy summer morning.

Trying to wash down what he had been able to get into his mouth, the judge gulped the hot, sickening sweet coffee, burning his lips and tongue in the process. His pudgy face grew to a beet red that complemented the orange of the marmalade and the white of his goatee nicely. He searched in vain for the napkins that had been intentionally left off the table, looking more like he needed a dip in the public swimming pool.

Mae now stood over him with a wet table rag in one hand, a child’s bib in the other and a satisfied impish grin on her faced and asked, “Melpya.”