Odd Embers Writing Contest

A Literal Contest: Results

“Cruel Obsessions” (First Place)

by Daniel Clark-Mudge

It all started with a feeling—like something was wrong with me. A prickling on the surface of my skin that I could only describe as how it would feel to touch television static. No matter how hard I tried, it just wouldn’t go away.

I trace it back to this box my mom kept in our basement, full of things she couldn’t let go of: a childhood teddy bear, a broken Tamagotchi, a locket with a picture of her friend Mel smiling inside. Then, right at the bottom, an old VHS coated in dust: Cruel Obsessions.

It was fine. I was fine. Until I put that fucking movie on. Until Academy Award Nominee Stella Lyonne stared back at me with haunted, hazel eyes.

Eight Saturdays ago, I put it on for the first time. It was a horror movie, which I don’t even like. In it, Stella Lyonne’s character runs and runs from this guy who wears a hockey mask. He kills her friends in all these fucked up ways that made me grip the sides of our old couch so tightly that it felt like I was going to tear the fabric. It made me feel sick, but I kept watching. I had to see if Stella made it out intact.

But then, as the third act starts, it’s just Stella and her best friend Rachel left. They’re hiding in a barricaded bathroom bathed in neon light. Rachel starts to cry, and Stella comforts her. They pull each other close, and my throat closed up. Stella brushes her friend’s hair out of her eyes, and they kiss. 

That was when my nails really did puncture the fabric of the couch.

That was when I turned it off. 

That was when the feeling started. 

I tried to brush it off. Tried to go to school. Tried to ignore the fact that it felt like something was burrowing underneath me. 

“Jen?” my best friend Taylor asked me on Monday in biology, concern furrowing her brow. “You’re sweating.”

I told her I was fine. That it was just cramps. That it would pass.

“Do you need a pad?” she asked me, sliding her hand onto mine. It was like she jammed a knife between my knuckle bones. I jerked my hand away. A buzzing in my ears drowned out the rest of whatever she said.

I usually take the bus home. But I left early that day, and walked the whole five kilometres. All while my skin felt like it was on fire.

That night, I was in front of the TV, putting on Cruel Obsessions. Because I had to see what happened next. That would make me feel normal. 

I never made it to the ending. I always stopped in the bathroom scene. Sometimes I would rewind it, and watch the hockey mask killer rip out the entrails of Stella’s boyfriend over and over again—just to feel something. It made no sense that she did that right after her boyfriend got murdered. Why would she kiss Rachel? It just didn’t make any fucking sense. 

Narratively. 

I watched Cruel Obsessions every day for the next eight weeks. I never made it past that scene. Could never stomach it.

When I rubbed at the skin of my wrist, I swear it felt thicker than usual. Like there was something else under there. Another layer.

Taylor tried to talk to me again at school. She told me that she’s worried about me. Says it’s like I’m a different person.

I was skipping biology again to avoid her, staring at myself in the mirror. If the light hit my eyes at the right angle, they almost looked hazel instead of blue. There were these lumps on my skin, and the world was starting to blur. Something was happening to me. Maybe I was a different person.

Taylor opened the door and I saw her in the mirror behind me, wearing a hockey mask and holding a knife. Ready to rip my entrails out. 

I ran home that time.

📼

Now, here I am. In front of this fucking TV again. Sliding Cruel Obsessions into the VHS player. Listening to the mechanical whirring of the tape rewinding. Waiting for Stella Lyonne’s haunted eyes to reappear. I google her as I wait. She died five years ago. There’s every chance she’s haunting this tape; haunting me. My skin prickles. 

The all-too-familiar logos flicker to life as the movie starts. Then, there she is.

“Can you hear me?” I ask. But she’s too busy laughing at a joke with Rachel as they throw popcorn at each other. It’s movie night, they’re about to go to a party, and they don’t know their lives are about to change forever. 

I keep watching, waiting for them to barricade that bathroom door. When they lean into each other, I lean forward. I’ll keep watching this time. I’ll see it through, and find the truth.

They break apart. I sigh; it’s done.

They come together again, and I scream. Independently of me, my fist shatters the TV screen and the glass slashes my wrist.

Skin pulsing with red pain, I rush into our bathroom. Lock the door behind me. Ignore my mum calling out to see if everything is okay. 

I run my wrist under the cold water, and look down at the slash. There’s a peeling where the glass cut me, and underneath there isn’t blood, or bone. There’s skin. Slightly more tanned than mine. 

Frantically, I try to smooth it back over. What would Mum think? What would Taylor think?

But, no matter how hard I try, the skin peels further back. Reveals more of this intruder. 

I gasp and look up into the mirror, run my hands across my face, where the skin sloughs away. In the detritus, there’s a single hazel eye. Stella Lyonne’s eye.

I try to scream, but she’s stolen my voice. With it, she says, “don’t you want to see how it ends, Jen?”

Ember says: "Well. I'll never look at a rash in quite the same way again..."

“My Friend Murder” (Second Place)

by Charlie Rogers

My friend Murder has three rules.

One, don’t ask him how he got his name. Two, don’t complain about his smoking. Three, don’t ever ask him where we’re going. Easy enough—I already figured out how he got his name, I smoke too, and most of all, since Jacob decided we’re not compatible, I would go anywhere with Murder, just as long as it gets me away from the house.

“Look, another one,” Murder says, leaning over the steering wheel to peer up at something in the sky. I follow his gaze to a big black bird perched on a shimmering wire.

I tap my nearly finished cigarette against the edge of the window. “Is that new… this obsession with counting crows?”

Murder glares at me. “It’s not where the name comes from, if that’s what you’re fishing around for.”

The name isn’t as big a mystery as he thinks it is. His real name is Matthew. Murder is just a particularly memorable mispronunciation, inherited from his little sister before she died.

“They’re guiding us, Barry,” Murder says, answering a question I didn’t ask.

I almost ask to where? but catch myself. I’ll find out when we get there.

I’ve known Murder forever, since he was the weird kid with the dead sister who kept getting suspended for fighting, and I was the frayed-nerve of a gay kid who Murder was always getting into fights to protect.

Ever since then we’ve been two moons orbiting the same lifeless planet. Before he reappeared, I couldn’t have said how long it had been since we’d seen each other—three years? Five? But the day after Jacob’s breakup speech, Murder turned up at my door with his rules and muttered promises of adventure.

We’ve gone out nearly every night since. Usually it’s nowhere that interesting—he takes me to a secluded spot and we climb into the backseat and he holds me while I cry. Sometimes he cries too. Sometimes neither of us cry and we take our clothes off instead. I have my own rule: no naked crying.

It isn’t sexual. My ex Jacob calls Murder my rebound. His inability to grasp my history with Murder is a comforting reminder that he was right—we are incompatible.

“I can hear you thinking about him,” Murder says, a little annoyed.

I never know if he’s serious when he says stuff like that. “Just about his awfulness.” I flick my cigarette out the window, watching it vanish into the dirt as if it never existed. I already want another.

“Doesn’t matter.” Murder hits the switch to automatically roll up my window and leans to switch the air-conditioner on despite knowing it doesn’t really work. “You can’t bring him where we’re going.”

Again, I’m tempted to ask where that is, exactly, but I don’t have to. As we reach the crest of a small hill, the top of a distant ferris wheel reveals itself through the shimmering heat. “Oh,” I say, without thinking.

The ferris wheel is the main attraction in a traveling carnival—the sort that rolls into town in the waning days of summer to distract kids from the impending return to school, the sort that’s often more depressing than it is fun. But this one looks abandoned. It dwarfs the old brick shopping mall beside it. We’re close enough now that if there were any people milling around, I’d see them.

Outside the car, Murder hums Depeche Mode—he has a lovely voice—and starts walking fast, like he’s barefoot on hot sand. We weave though rows and rows of ramshackle carny booths and rusted food carts. Murder is still moving at a surprisingly rapid clip and I struggle to keep up. “How long has this been here?” I ask.

“It’s always been here,” he replies. “C’mon, we need to get to the ferris wheel.”

The ferris wheel is a lot less impressive up close, but that doesn’t slow Murder at all. He heads right up the ramp to one of the rusted seats—flakes of blue paint the only evidence of its once-cheerful origins—and pauses only once he gets there to make sure I’m following.

I hesitate. It all feels so strange all of a sudden, how Murder mysteriously turned up the day after Jacob dumped me, like I summoned him somehow. And now this surreal carnival. I’m not sure any of it’s real.

I’m so overwhelmed, I don’t notice Murder approaching me, only becoming aware of his presence when he takes my hand. I can’t remember him ever doing that before, in all the decades I’ve known him, in all the intimate moments we’ve shared.

“I’m sorry.” he says, his voice even softer than normal. “I know this is all a bit much. I know I can be a bit much. I just wanted to help.”

I remember the day we met. The playground, before school, one of the first days of second grade. I was new at the school after my parents’ divorce. Some bigger kid—his name and face long lost to time but the menace in his voice has never left me—was calling me names. Said I looked like a vampire. Said I looked like a homo. I didn’t even know what that word meant but I somehow knew he was right. And then there was Murder, out of nowhere, rising like a shadow to punch the bigger kid in the face.

It’s often like this with Murder. But he’s never taken me anywhere I didn’t want to go. “What happens if we ride the ferris wheel?”

His gaze drifts towards our feet. “It shows you what’s important, hopefully.”

A black bird lands on the edge of the once-blue seat, watching us. A moment later there’s a second one, so close to the first that their wings touch. Murder hasn’t seen or counted them yet, but he looks at me and smiles, and for the first time in my life, I understand where I belong.

“I already know what’s important,” I say. “But sure, let’s ride.”

Ember says: "I'm tempted to ask what's next for them, but I'm worried about breaking the rules."

“NO CARRIER” (Third Place)

by Glen Creed

At 9:47, Mom yells down the basement stairs that she needs the phone at ten, when Aunt Lisa gets off shift. The modem has the line until then.

I yell back that I heard her, which is not the same as agreeing.

Beth's message appears in the AOL chat room.

BETHANY13: go on, Marcy. tell them who's hiding behind HEXGIRL99

RATGRRL: who is marcy

I answer before Beth can.

HEXGIRL99: nobody you know

BETHANY13: girl in my chem class who only has a spine when she's behind a keyboard

Beth was the only person who knew HEXGIRL99 was me, until April, when she told everybody who mattered and three people who didn't. Behind that name I could say anything, and she sat right here picking who deserved it. HEXGIRL9 was taken, so she added the second 9. She said the first one looked lonely.

Her B is still carved beside my M in the paneling by my knee. I crack open a warm Surge.

HEXGIRL99: your face isn't worth leaving the basement for

BETHANY13: you'll eat your words, Marcy

RATGRRL: shit yeah

RATGRRL: hope you're hungry

The dot-matrix printer beside the monitor wakes up. The paper feeds from the box beneath it, one long fan-folded tongue. The printer head jerks side to side, screaming my last line.

I tear the page off and peel the sprocket strips from both sides. The letters are warm under my thumb.

I could ignore her, but Beth would call that winning. I bite into the message.

The ink tastes the way the stamp pad in the attendance office smells. The paper goes pulpy against my teeth. A comma sticks behind my left molar. I press it deeper. I have to work it down with Surge.

Onscreen, my insult disappears.

I stare at where it was.

BETHANY13: ?

BETHANY13: ??

BETHANY13: where did it go

BETHANY13: what did you even say

Laughing jerks Surge up my nose. It burns behind my eyes.

The printer spits out an older line.

HEXGIRL99: you spend every passing period fixing your bangs and still can't pass chem

Capitals crack better than lowercase. Exclamation points are sharp enough to make my gums bleed, but there aren't any in this one.

Shame.

BETHANY13: stop whatever you're doing

HEXGIRL99: why

The printer spits out why before I swallow the insult. The W is chewy. The Y snaps.

BETHANY13: because you're deleting everything

BETHANY13: i scrolled up

BETHANY13: it's like i'm talking to myself

BETHANY13: stop

BETHANY13: stop

I eat faster.

The printer chatters hard enough to shake the desk while the paper snakes across the carpet, every message I ever sent, newest first. I tear and chew and swallow without stopping until ink paints my tongue black and paper slices open both corners of my mouth.

One says save me a seat. I don't remember sending it. I remember the seat, and her jacket on it. I eat it anyway.

The next one says don't let her sit with us. I remember who.

HEXGIRL99: beth flunks chem on purpose so mr larkin keeps her after class

The lie prints with pale hairs growing from the letters. I tear it free, gag, and bite down. It bursts hot and syrupy over the back of my tongue.

The true ones never tasted like that.

RATGRRL: dude

BETHANY13: Marcy seriously

Mom's footsteps cross the ceiling. She stomps once over my head. Warning shot.

I keep chewing.

Then an old one, from when Beth still came over:

HEXGIRL99: bring the cherry coke. mom rented scream again

I press my thumb into the groove of her B in the paneling and eat the message.

BETHANY13: wait

The Cherry Coke goes. So does the night.

BETHANY13: what was i waiting for

Then the line I sent after she told me about her dad:

HEXGIRL99: no wonder he left

BETHANY13: don't bring up my dad

I tear off my line and feed it into my mouth. No wonder dissolves. He sticks to my gums. Left stays hard as a staple.

BETHANY13: what did you say about him

I swallow.

BETHANY13: why did i ask that

RATGRRL: you brought him up

When the printer slows, I know what comes next.

The head crosses the page once. Twice.

HEXGIRL99: please don't tell anyone it's me

My teeth ache to the roots. Every swallow tastes like blood.

I tear the line free anyway.

The word please is the worst part. Soft. Sodden before it reaches my mouth.

BETHANY13: leave that one

I push please onto my tongue.

The rest follows. Don't has a hard center. Anyone catches in my throat. I let it's me slide down whole.

The message disappears.

BETHANY13: Mar

Nothing after it.

The printer head starts again. No message this time. Just the part I never typed:

HEXGIRL99

Again.

HEXGIRL99

Again.

Of course. One for every message I ever sent, and the paper keeps coming, pouring over my knees and coiling around my ankles.

Upstairs, Mom shouts, "Two minutes!"

I wrap the strip around my fist and bite down.

The X lodges behind my front teeth. The G tastes burnt. The 9s stick flat to the roof of my mouth, two little hooks I have to scrape loose with my thumbnail.

I eat my name until the printer stops.

RATGRRL: who are you

I wipe my mouth on my sleeve. It comes away gray and red, but her B stays beside my M in the wall.

I type.

MARCY: someone Beth knows

BETHANY13 stays in the member list.

BETHANY13: who is marcy

MARCY: your turn

My split lip catches on my teeth when I smile. I shape my name in my mouth, but no sound rises behind it. MARCY comes off the printer instead. The wad in my stomach pushes up under my ribs as I lean over the keys.

I type you'll eat your words, Beth.

At ten, my finger jabs Enter just as Mom picks up the phone.

The modem opens its throat.

NO CARRIER

by Kelli Johnson

Reese remembers little about the carnival itself. Memory has swallowed his brisk walk past the Ferris wheel, the fortune-tellers, the fry-cooks fishing dough out of frothing vats of oil. It was the summer of ’93, a beat of held breath before websites became verbs and garages minted millionaires, and Reese was wending his way toward the future, whatever shape it might take.

He sought only one of the carnival’s attractions, one that left whispers in its wake when it wound across the Panhandle: a painted caravan beyond the midway. According to those whispers, which had lured Reese all the way from Amarillo, anyone who entered the caravan walked out of it changed: some found striking success; others, spectacular ruin. Admission cost exactly one peanut.

Reese wondered which fate would befall him.

Single-minded as he was, he paused just once, stalled by his own reflection in a funhouse mirror. The warped glass stretched him devilishly tall, swelled his shoulders, broadened his jaw so that, for one hypnotic heartbeat, he caught sight of the man he’d spent his whole childhood hoping to become. Moments later, the mirage ebbed away, and he moved on.

The caravan was a festive, bejeweled thing, the size and shape of four double-wides fused together, painted with a mural of the wheel Fortuna. Reese wondered how such a monster got towed cross-country as he climbed the retractable steps to the entrance, where a doorman in a burgundy suit waited, hands folded.

“You got it?” the man grunted.

Reese fished the peanut from his pocket and held out his palm. He’d spent half an hour picking the most aesthetic shell from a gas station barrel. It was lightly tan, with perfect net-like wrinkles and two lobes equal in size. The doorman scrutinized it with clerical seriousness, before stepping aside and ushering him through a beaded curtain.

Inside was low-lit and air-conditioned, with open-facing cabinets of dark walnut lining the walls. Each alcove housed a single peanut beneath a crystal cloche. A brass placard beneath the most prominent one read:

William Henry Gates, 1974

There were dozens more, so Reese went down the line of housed peanuts: John DeLorean, 1981. Jeffrey Katzenberg, 1987. Monica Seles, 1990. Mike Tyson, 1991.

“Have you come a long way?” asked a voice from behind.

Reese turned to find a silver-haired woman wearing an embroidered black silk dress. A dragonfly brooch glittered at her throat with enough tiny emeralds to buy a harem, if they were real. The golden glint of a watch peeked from beneath her sleeve.

“Not as long as some.” Reese pointed to Tyson’s peanut. “Did he come here before or after all that—?”

“After,” she said. “Some people are never satisfied.” She offered him her hand. “Myrtle.”

“Reese.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Reese.” Myrtle procured two stools from a lower cabinet and sat herself atop one. “Tell me your life story.”

He couldn’t help but laugh as he sank onto the other stool. “That’s an awfully big request.”

Myrtle smiled. “Have you had an awfully big life, young man?”

“Well…” Reese rolled the peanut between his fingers and sighed. “I didn’t start out life as a man. When I told my family, Pa declared it a phase. Didn’t look me in the eye for a year. This past spring, I packed a couple duffel bags and left.” He shrugged. “Been driftin’ since. Odd jobs, surfin’ couches. Send my sister Cheryl cards on her birthday, though I don’t know if she gets them. She was so little when it all went down…”

Myrtle nodded. “That explains what you left behind,” she said softly. “Now tell me what you’re walking toward.”

“The internet,” Reese recited, his answer prepared. “Someday, everybody’s gonna live part of their lives there, I know it. And I wanna help build it—a place people can find each other.” His smile faded. “Problem is, I don’t know a single soul in this game. Don’t even got enough money for a bus ticket to Sacramento.”

“Thank you,” said Myrtle with a sweetened smile. “It ain’t easy laying your truth bare.” She held out her hand. “I’d like to buy your peanut.”

Reese blinked. “Huh?”

“I’ll give you five hundred dollars for it.”

Reese unfurled his fingers, considered the sweaty shell in his palm. He realized he’d been gripping it hard while telling his tale. “I… I don’t know.”

Myrtle stood. “A grand, then.”

Reese glanced around at the caravan’s interior: the rich, whorled wood, the bespoke built-ins, the tell-tale buzzing of a security system; he had no doubt the woman was good for such a sum. And yet…

With a small sigh, Myrtle slipped off her watch. Gold caught the cabinet lights. “You know what a Rolex is, Reese? Take it. Buy yourself a car. Hit the road west and never look back.”

For one halcyon moment, Reese pictured it: the interstate snaking toward the Pacific, windows down, every mile a promise fulfilled.

But then… the peanut. It grew warm in his hand. Something faint seemed to flutter inside the shell. Or maybe it was just his own pulse.

He pocketed it.

“I can’t.”

Myrtle studied him a long while before refastening the Rolex onto her wrist. Her disappointment was unmistakable, but so was the smile that bled in thereafter. “Good man,” she said. “Most people trade away uncertainty first chance they get.”

Patting his shoulder, she steered him back through the beaded curtain without another word.

🥜

These days, each time Reese unpockets his peanut, he can’t tell if the legume’s gotten heavier or lighter over the years, the ridges long polished by a lifetime of thumbstrokes. Within its twin chambers, he pictures two shriveled morsels jangling around.

Yet it’s a part of him, as familiar as his wedding band or the faded pair of scars on his chest.

He’s carried it thirty-three years. Though sometimes he suspects, given all that life has blessed him with—a company, a child, and Christmases with Cheryl—perhaps it carried him.

Ember says: "I don't think I could hold onto a peanut for that long. They tend to end up roasted if I keep them in my pocket."

“Split Seconds” (Fifth Place)

by Lily Luz

Sitting sidebarrel on my shotgun, I begin my descent toward the husk of Reverie Falls Mall. My rapid downward spiral gives my mental health a run for its money. 

I parrot Zayden’s nepo baby cadence, “I know this was supposed to be your project, but are you sure you don’t want to let someone else handle it? A full twentieth century demo is a big ask, even without the deadline being pushed up to midnight. Maybe a mature and experienced chronomancer like you could contribute in another way?”

What I wanted to say to my manager would have landed me in a hot cauldron with Witch Resources: “‘Mature and experienced’ my ass. Just because I’ve got a few more grays in my copper than I had last week doesn’t mean I’m a fucking fossil.”

What I actually said was, “I’ll handle it.”

I whizz through a parking lot that’s more crack and weeds than asphalt. I’ve got an hour left with one decade to go. You’d think a chronomancer would have endless time, but I’ve got the same twenty-four hours as everyone else.

Any entrance that isn’t boarded up is collapsed. As soon as I spot a broken window, I send my light orb through ahead of me.

I suppress a shudder at the mannequins posed around the ruins of the store. My toes curl in my shoes as I glide through the opening. “Focus, Bex.”

Time has a way of stagnating in abandoned places. The first several decades I took imprints of earlier tonight had been brittle and delicate. Here it's still gelatinous, sluggishly flowing and malleable. Perfect.

I don’t dismount, partly because I don’t want to risk contaminating the time stream by stirring up memories that have settled like silt; I mostly don’t want to run in heels if one of these mannequins is possessed.

I take the safety off my shotgun. The rounds aren’t lethal. They freeze a target by looping the same second for a minute or so, which gives me more than enough time to escape.

I weave through the manufactured models. My skin crawls. I swear their eyeless gazes are following me. I know the blank, ageless faces were intended to make it easy for pre-magic society to picture themselves in the displayed outfits, but they’re uncanny.

One size fits all, reads a fallen sign.

“Not that far off from this, is it?” I flick at the century disk on my hip. Nine out of ten divots hold a chronomatic marble, each the diluted essence of a decade.

I’d argued with Zayden, “Preserving time without individual memories, emotions, or experience makes the context meaningless. They’ll be shallow, flashy generalizations.”

“You’re out of touch, B.” Zayden had pushed away yet another one of my proposals for an interactive series, Apocalypse Then, with a condescending moue. “Customers don’t care what the nonmagical were doing on New Year’s Eve 1999. They want immersive, romanticized timescapes that came before the rift the collapse opened. They trust our brand to deliver simpler times without the fuss of settling into someone else’s memories. We deliver perfection without baggage. Nothing uncomfortable or unpredictable whatsoever.”

I scoff. “How’s this for unpredictable?” I smack a mannequin as I pass, wishing it was Zayden.

It teeters. I wince as mannequins topple like dominoes. Hollow limbs and torsos scatter and disturb the memory layer. The current sweeps the debris towards the nexus.

“Yay. More work.” I take off at full speed to get ahead of the memorial impurities. Time is attracted to intersections where paths have repeatedly crossed, and where emotional intensity still echoes.

“The food court.” The overgrown ruins blur as I race toward the fountain at the food court’s heart.

Time pools in the empty base. It’s pumping up through the crumbling tiers on long dead motion.

I hover close enough to skim the surface with my fingertips. A bit of magenta stands out against the tiled bottom. It’s the top of a cloudy plastic capsule like the kind I’ve seen dispensed for quarters in recreation records.

“It’s unopened.” Wonder redirects my hand toward it and the mystery inside. The shotgun tips when I lean a little too far. I slide right off—miraculously, and moronically—managing to cock, aim, and fire as I fall ass first into the nexus. At the same moment, I’m face to face with the oncoming memories. I can’t stop them.

“Oh, sh—”

I’m sharing a chocolate shake shared over first date jitters.

I’m two tables over, contemplating divorce, lamenting sixteen years down the drain.

I’m a child with my nose pressed to a toy store window, but I don’t ask for anything. Mommy’s been crying over envelopes again.

I’m guiltily pocketing a Ricky Martin CD. I’ve seen at school how boys like me are bullied.

I’m fracturing across a hundred different lives lived in instant eternity, tumbling inside a kaleidoscope of the human experience, sliding across the full emotional spectrum.

“—it!”

I crawl out of the fountain like some primordial bitch rising from time-forgotten depths. I slump onto the ground, reconsolidating myself back into me and now.

“The deadline.” I could still make it.

But then what? I get passed over for promotion again for someone younger? I wither away with my dreams of holding chrononarrative exhibitions?

I’m still clutching the prize capsule. I pop it open and squint at what falls out.

“…A pog?”

It’s so mundane and absurd that I laugh. The disappointment is unexpected. Real. Revivifying. 

I turn the unfinished century over in my other hand. This could never give anyone the same rush of seeing time through another’s eyes.

“I’m done wasting time chasing trends and approval. I quit.” I chuck the disk into the fountain like a coin. The essences shatter in a collision of currents that geyser from the fountain.

Glass capsules with neon tops rain down, filling the base with unfiltered, imperfect, unpredictable moments I've preserved. I scoop up a handful. “I’ll create more than empty nostalgia.”

Ember says: "Who knew witches could be even cooler if you put them on a literal time-looping gun?"

“Even Flow” (Sixth Place)

by Chad Frame

When I see the name Peterson as my 3:00, I don't think anything of it.

But then his family walks in. The still-married mom and dad in matching denim, the bratty little brother with a blue-and-purple windbreaker over his green Captain Planet shirt. And behind them, Sean.

God, he looks perfect. A tight shirt, a shave and a haircut, pants that show off his bits—

“Hey,” he says, walking over to me, out of his family’s earshot, breaking the tension with a wave.

“Of all the JCPenney Portrait Studios in all the Chicago suburbs in all the world,” I say, “He walks into mine.”

“Sorry. I know it’s been a while. And this is probably an awkward way to reconnect.”

“You’re the one who left. Went off to your big fancy school. I’ll bet you’ve connected with all kinds of people there.”

“I might’ve stayed if you’d asked.”

“I might’ve asked if I thought you’d cared.”

“Jesus, Jeff. That’s not fair—”

“Sean!” his mom shouts. “Come stand next to your brother.”

📸

I’ve shot disastrous Christmas cards, but this one definitely ranks up there.

First, we have to pause when they notice his little brother has a literal chip on his shoulder. They told him not to eat Pringles in the car. He told them once he popped, he couldn’t stop.

Next, his dad has a lopsided smile due to a stiff upper lip.

“Frank was at the dentist this morning,” his mom explains.

“Nobocin wrrn uff,” Frank adds, helpfully.

“Look,” I say. “Why don’t we take five? It’ll give you guys time to coordinate.”

Before anyone can object, I duck into the darkroom and shut the door. I slump to the floor, knees hugged to chest, back against the door for support.

I guess it’s his turn to haunt me at work.

📸

The first time I walked into Sam Goody, the shaggy-haired boy behind the counter laughed when he saw me thumbing through the Pearl Jam CDs.

“You’ve got Portishead and Pixies right there,” Sean said, licking a cherry Ring Pop. His lips were so, so red. “Hell, even PJ Harvey. But you go straight for rocks-in-his-cheeks Eddie Vedder?”

I shrugged. “I like Jeremy. And Billboard suggests so does the rest of the country.”

He rolled his brown eyes. I followed them all the way around.

The next day, I walked in carrying two Orange Julius, acting like they’d given me the extra by mistake.

“Thanks,” he said, accepting it. “You get a pad for that Even Flow?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Debaser?”

He tore half the wrapper off his straw. “You listened to the Pixies.”

“Actually,” I corrected, “It’s just Pixies. I’d think a true fan would know that.”

He grinned, then blew the rest of the wrapper at me like a paper rocket.

I started visiting every shift and just stood there at the counter while we made fun of one another.

Then one day, we were behind the counter, making fun of everyone else.

Then one day, we were in the stockroom, making—

📸

A loud pounding vibrates my whole body.

“Hey, lemme in,” Sean says through the door.

“They teach you that shit at college?”

“Yeah,” he says. “School of Hard Knocks. That was called the Overhand Pound. It was on the final.”

I sniff, rubbing my eyes, but I can’t suppress a grin. “Well, I’m sure you nailed it.”

“Believe me when I tell you that’s all I’ve nailed.”

“Bullshit.” I look up, eyes adjusting to the red light. Same ceiling. Same cracks. Same spider in the corner. “You just want something easy while you’re home on break.”

“I mean it. I don’t care about any of the losers there.”

“Or maybe you just struck out. You may be a Glenwood ten, but you’re probably an Elmhurst six.”

I hear him laughing. “Well, at least you admitted I’m a ten.”

I let the silence stretch a few beats. Then, “I told them after you left, you know.”

He pauses. “Told who?”

“Everyone. I just got tired of hiding.”

“That’s heavy, man. And honestly, that’s incredibly brave.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Some kind of small-town superhero.”

“Hey,” he said, “I said it was brave. I didn’t say it was so brave I could ignore the irony of you telling me that shit while you’re locked in there.”

I grin, then reach to open the door. “I’m the one who’s out, and here I am, inviting you into the closet.”

There’s Sean, handsome face haloed in the studio’s white light.

“Later,” he says, nodding back over his shoulder to his bickering family. “I’m home for another week.”

I’m sure he sees my face fall.

“After that,” he says, reaching to give my hand a quick, discreet squeeze, “Northwestern’s only about an hour away. There’s these things called buses, you know.”

“Shit,” I say. “Is that new?”

“I’m afraid they’re fresh outta carriages.”

“Straight Outta Compton.”

“Ugh, you always did have the worst taste in music.”

“And the worst taste in boys.”

“And boys.”

“Hey!” his mom shouts. “Can you please come back here and do your job? I wanted to ask about laser backgrounds.”

“I’ll tell them soon,” Sean whispers as we walk to rejoin his family. His breath goosepimples my ear. It smells faintly of Orange Julius. “I promise I will.”

“Did you just say lasers?” his brother asks, perking up.

“Lithrs?” his dad mumbles. “Thonds ikpenthiv.”

“You can take your time,” I whisper back to Sean. “I’m not in a rush to have in-laws.”

The shocked look on his face is worth it, and it stays there as I get behind the camera.

“That’s perfect,” I say, looking through the viewfinder. “Everyone say Better Man.”

Everyone does as I take the photo. Except his dad, who says “Beh min.”

“Frank!” I address the dad with a lopsided smile, but my eyes are locked on Sean, whose shock has melted into amusement. “Anybody ever told you your voice sounds exactly like Eddie Vedder?”

Ember says: "To say that my brain is straight filled with 90s lyrics after reading this would be an understatement! Also, I need to find an Orange Julius."

The Long List

Presently alphabetically:

Judge Shoutouts

Judges were given the opportunity to call out a particular story from the contest that they enjoyed, no matter where it placed.

Judge 1: “How to Shave Your Werewolf” by Rachael Raine Rivers

“The set-up on this read just like an episode of Buffy—it was so much fun, with so many great details off the bat!”

Judge 2: “Coverage” by Ashleigh Adams

“The prose was a standout in this one, and the drywall becoming a seething mass of body parts was one of the most memorable images of the round for me.”

Judge 3: “I Want You Back” by Morgan Kostelnik

“Great use of a time loop trope to explore a familial relationship and the moments that shape our interactions! I really enjoyed the voice of the narrator and the overall structure of the reveal at the end.”

Judge 4: “Blood from a Stone" by Z. Rather

“Great descriptive details of a 90s house and its decor. I also really liked seeing the interior thoughts of a precocious and observant seven-year-old. I got a good sense of his isolation and 'differentness' from the rest of the family and neighbors.”

Judge 5: “Gears Turn” by Madason McCombs

“This piece had such strong voice and concept, exploring the quiet, powerful tragedy of a robot's journey of desire and self-discovery while under the control of an indifferent operator. Definitely a piece that will stay with me for a long while!”

Judge 6: “Self Portraiture” by JA Logwood

“Not only clever but intriguing and engaging use of the idiom in literal form, exploring the self with tight prose and compelling craft. I really enjoyed this one and it stuck with me long after reading."