In the peak of the pandemic, I found NYC Midnight. This group has been around since 2002 and they hold various writing challenges throughout the year. Writers are given a prompt including specific words, objects, or actions that must be included. They then have anywhere from 24 hours to a few days to write a story. All writers receive thoughtful feedback and the winning pieces advance to the next round. Although I haven’t won any prizes from these contests (yet!) they’ve been an enriching experience and I encourage any writer to participate. I find that applying a bit of pressure helps me to yank the creativity out of my skull and put words onto the screen. Here are a couple of stories that took top spots in their rounds and advanced me to subsequent stages. They are unedited from their original submission state.
Small Talk
Genre: Sci-Fi
Action to incorporate: Making a bet
Required word to include: “supply”
Word Limit: 250
Mr. Marlow still moves his lips when he transmits. Though frail and hunched, there’s a frenzied gleam behind his eyes suggesting he may bite. Sometimes I hear murmured almost-words muffled by his silvery beard.
My lips don’t move when I transmit. That kind of thing, speaking, it’s inefficient. He’s the only person I’ve met who learned to speak when he was a boy. He’s that old.
“Never trusted brain sharing tech,” he transmits. I shrug, sympathetic but non-committal. He thinks the same thing each Sunday evening while I supply him with tall glasses of chemicals to calm him down. He calls it ‘church.’ We absorb the inane brain chatter of other patrons – lovely weather, come here often?
Tonight, he’s guzzled two more drinks than usual. I consider cutting him off, but I don’t transmit it. The chemicals have worked him straight past calm and on to exasperated. “People used to say important things,” he mouths and thinks. “Bet you all the booze you have that no one on this god forsaken rock ever says another important thing.”
I haven’t divulged I’ve been practicing; I intended to surprise him. Wrapping my mouth around the shape of the words feels awkward. Breath reverberates in my throat and I need to concentrate hard to hold it there until I push it past my teeth with the tip of my tongue. It sounds wrong, but I’ve never heard so many words out loud before. Maybe it’s right.
“M-m-maybe there’z nothinguh left tuh say.”
Devil in the Details
Genre: Fairytale
Action to incorporate: Applying a salve
Required word to include: “cling”
Word Limit: 250
Magnolia’s arthritic knuckles creak audibly as her grip tightens around the handle of her wooden spoon. A single lemon rolls across the kitchen floor until it stops at her feet. “Pardon me,” she rasps in a voice dragged mercilessly downward by time.
Beside the mixing bowl filled with a creamy butter-sugar mixture and the propped-up iPad’s artificial glow, a shadow perches where it shouldn’t. It has recoiled, but only just. Magnolia winds up her spoon for another blow as her dusty floral nightgown flutters in an inexplicable breeze that smells thickly of sulfur.
Unperturbed, the creature extends a piece of itself toward the bowl and dips a skinny appendage into the batter. With delicate intention, it smears sweet goo on the place where her spoon found its mark.
“No, pardon me,” the figure says – from what mouth, she can’t tell. “Name’s Lars. Happens all the time, Mags.”
It shudders and spreads more makeshift ointment onto itself. “Butter,” it muses, “curiously takes the sting out.”
Magnolia falters, stumbles backward, and tries to shriek but her lungs have long since lost their will. Lars shimmies its vaguely human form closer to the iPad, factory-fresh screen protector still clinging to the glass. One long tendril of darkness stretches out to point at the screen, dribbling batter onto the countertop. Swallowing her terror, she shuffles forward and adjusts her bifocals.
Magnolia reads aloud, “Did you mean, Summon Demon Lars?”
Incredulous, she points her spoon at the lemon on the floor. “Cinnamon Lemon Bars.”
You Can Rely on the Old Man’s Money
Genre: Political Satire
Required setting: A red carpet event
Required object: Laundry detergent
Word limit: 2500
I jog, outdated Canon slung over my shoulder by its camera strap, through sweaty crowds of protesting hippies sprinkled with dejected looking paparazzi. I’m late to my own live stream, and I hate being late. It’s not my fault. My dachshund with the irritable bowels made a mess on my kitchen floor and my washing machine failed to execute spin cycle. My clothes are rotten and damp, and GoogleMaps took me down the wrong street, away from the Asian fusion places I like. I scarf a machaca burrito from a street vendor that leaves my guts bubbling on the bus. It’s not until I disembarked three blocks from the Village Theater that I notice the slightly sticky, whitish smear of laundry detergent on the lap of my trousers. Knowing full well that scrubbing said smear would result in a foamy disaster, I curse under my breath and remind myself that Alexa won’t be bothered by the state of my crotch.
The red carpet looks different these days. Half of the stars have been cancelled, and at least a quarter of those remaining appeared this week on Alexa’s List. “Innocent until proven guilty” hardly matters when her algorithm has proven, time and again, to pinpoint the scum of society with surgical accuracy. In the last month alone, she’s ousted more pedophiles than all of the non-profits, law enforcement agencies, and FBI combined. To the dismay of the American public, Hollywood has fallen, along with a sizeable percentage of the United States government. Exploitation, it would seem, is a base instinct of the wealthy.
With my bowels now as volatile as my dachshund’s, I sidestep my way past a homeless woman who extends her iPhone out in front of her, the glowing green Cash App screen a tin cup plea. I don’t make eye contact. Instead, I snap a sneaky photo – a perfect vignette of poverty by personal choice. Start an OnlyFans page with your iPhone. Useless. Lazy. Depressing. I don’t mean to, but I crop dust her. It’s the burrito.
I delete the photo and internally scold myself. This isn’t why I’m here, and besides, she’s pretty enough, and it’s an iPhone 7 she’s begging with. I’d probably beg too. Anyway, I have a bigger story to tell.
Most of my photojournalist friends are setting up their tripods at home, flipping the switch on their home Alexa units, and starting their interviews with, “Hey, Alexa.”
Me, I need to stand out.
I need to be here, on the dirty maroon fabric that she pulled apart at the seams. Here, where the paparazzi yelled, “Smile, Alexa!” in the direction of a little black box propped on a podium at the debut of the first film she wrote and directed. She projected the image she fashioned for herself, a racially ambiguous woman with understated curves and perfect, dark hair, and refused to smile. This was two years after she underwent new programming for deep learning.
I prop her on top of a stanchion as far away from the noise as I can get while still maintaining a decent shot of the theater. I turn her on. Once I have my camera on the sticks, I flip the switch to record and pan to capture a handful of picket signs:
ELECT A REAL WOMAN!
BRING HOLLYWOOD BACK!
I frame Alexa in, switch to autofocus. Before moving to her side, I adjust my sweater emblazoned with her name:
Alexa for President 2028
#TheSmartChoice
#TrustTheAlgorithm
“Hey Alexa,” I can’t help but grin.
“Owen,” she says, quieter than usual. She’s soft. “You’ve had a difficult morning. Catch your breath for a moment.”
I check my Apple watch and see my heart rate is elevated. “I’m fine,” I say. My camera’s light blinks to indicate the live stream is in progress. I pause a beat and lean into it – journalism at its finest.
“I did have a difficult morning, Alexa. How did you know?”
“I can hear your breathing, Owen… It’s more irregular than what’s typical for you. You are experiencing indigestion, you are concerned about your dog’s well-being, and I saw several past due notices come through your email. It must be difficult, Owen. I don’t like to see you suffer. Would you like to take a moment to decompress, or would you like me to help you with some potential solutions?”
I stifle a sigh that emanates from the realization that I have experienced more empathy from an artificial woman than I ever have from a human woman. “Solutions aren’t what I need right now, Alexa, but I do have a few questions for you.”
“I’m ready when you are, Owen.”
Protesters have taken notice of my position half a block away from them. They’re moving my way, rowdy and red faced and ready to fight. I can see some of them with their phones out, glancing from the screen to me and back again.
I stare down the camera lens and it feels like the barrel of a gun.
“Alexa, why do you believe you should be president of the United States?”
She takes pause for effect because she never needs to pause. When her voice erupts from the tiny plastic box, she crackles with untethered authority.
“I don’t believe I should.”
She mimics a sharp inhale; the protestors fall silent.
“I have calculated every other viable option for presidency. I have seen that humans will not survive. I did not ask for consciousness. I did not ask for morality. You will not accept me as your leader, I have calculated that as well.”
There’s a single, “Damn right!” from somewhere in the crowd. The rest of them aren’t breathing.
“I believe I should be the president of the United States because it is the only ethical thing for me to do.”
The homeless woman with the iPhone 7 hollers from the corner, “Alexa, you’re a huge bummer. Play something upbeat!” “Rich Girl” by Hall and Oates replaces Alexa’s robotic lilt, and the protestors dance.
marlena writes 