The voting was going on in a major way over the 24 hours, but in the end, you know how it goes: only one can win. This week’s winner: Glenn Hedden
Here’s Glenn’s winning entry:
You wouldn’t believe the awful shit I’ve heard. Just terrible, horrible, make you want to
bore a drill into your temple so you never have to remember it kind of shit. This girl,
though, absolutely took the cake.I mean, she’s sitting here droning on and on about her stupid dog and how her hairstylist
screwed up her perm. It looked fine to me, I mean I still wanted to get it on. I tell
you, the things I put up with for a piece of ass. To top it all off, my beer is warm from
sitting here at this dingy, dark hole of a bar because I’ve been stuck at this booth
having to pretend to actually give a crap about the inane, ludicrous babbling spewing from
this woman’s mouth. It was a nice mouth, though, I’ve got to give her that. Had those
nice pouty lips, you know the kind. With the ivory white teeth beneath, the kind of teeth
you can just imagine rubbing up against… well, you know where I’m going with this.Awful. This chick was awful, and my beer wasn’t getting any colder. Now she’s talking about
her best friend and some stupid rumor about her that was spread around that apparently her
friend had a hand in spreading. Like I care.It doesn’t matter. I’ll keep listening to her, just like I kept listening to the one last
weekend, and that idiotic blond from the weekend before. I’ll keep listening, she’ll keep
drinking.By the time last call comes around, she’ll come home with me. A few days later she might
show up on the news, you might see a picture of her. People will miss her, but I’m careful.
It’ll be clean, no one will find her.Really, I’m doing everyone a favor.
Congratulations to Glenn, and many thanks to the guest judge for this week, Mark Tullius. Glenn wins a copy of his novel Brightside.
See you back here next week for another round of 5 Minute Fiction. Next week’s guest judge is Seattle writer Carly Anne West.
One Response
Voices
by Lisa McCourt Hollar
The murmurings in my head grew in intensity. Carry tried to block them out, to fathom what I was seeing, but they wouldn’t shut up.
“You killed him!” Doreen screamed and in my head I felt Henry flinch at the force of her anger.
“He was hurting her,” Henry said, defending his actions.
Carry whimpered, the knife in her hand feeling heavy. His blood dripped, staining the carpet.
“That will never come clean,” Maura bitched. “She’ll have to tear it out and get new carpeting.”
“Better to just go with a wooden floor. She can stain it and I’ve always liked the look,” Tara said, quietly. She was almost not heard over the clamor of the others.
“Please stop,” Tammy cried. She was in the far corner of Carry’s mind, the murder too much for her seven year old mind.
“It wasn’t murder,” Henry said, soothing the child and glaring at Doreen who continued to scream over the death of her step-father.
“What do you call it then?” Maura laughed. You stabbed him with a knife.
“NO!” Carry dropped the knife and put her hands to her ears. She couldn’t block out the voices though, all vying for her attention.
“That’s enough,” Tara said, her voice finally finding the strength to be heard over the others. “He was going to hurt her. Again. We couldn’t stand for it. No longer.”
“Just shut up and be quiet, like you always are,” Doreen snarled. “He was still our father…”
“He stopped being our father when we were seven,” Maura said. “What should we use to get the blood out?”
“What should we…” Doreen sputtered. “We should call the police.”
“Do you want to go to jail?” Tara asked? Suddenly everyone was looking at her, the quiet, shy one no more. “I don’t. If she goes to jail, so do we.”
Carry stayed up all night cleaning. “The wood floors look nice.” She said when she was done.