Giraffes, Gay Bars, and Purple Cabins

According to the map, the treasure is about 4 giraffes from here. Said no one, ever. I hated these short story writing sessions that my parents and therapist forced me to attend. Whose idea was it that writing about your feelings made anything better? They just didn’t get it. No one got it. So, in order to stick it to the man, I spent about a half hour every day writing about giraffes, gay bars, and purple cabins. Let’s see Dr. Punjab Kapoor read into that.

My parents were idiots. They spent thousands of dollars on daily private counseling sessions with an Indian therapist who spoke as if he had learned English from scholarly journals. As if I was going to tell him anything—he literally wouldn’t and couldn’t even understand. Maybe that was part of the problem, my parents spent more money than time on problems. “We just don’t know what’s going on with you right now, and frankly neither do you,” they insisted. “Wouldn’t you like to talk about it with someone?” “Yeah, you guys,” I thought to myself. It shouldn’t take a PhD to realize I had been struggling. But between my father’s cheating, my mom’s denial, and the most perfectly kept house in all of Huntington Beach, you go crazy. We were the best looking dysfunctional mess anyone had ever seen. So why actually admit our struggles when you can send your hormonal teenager to India every day.

“Karissa, have you completed your daily writing task? If you need more time you can have it.” “Oh, crap,” I thought. “Umm… can I read over it really quickly?” I asked. “Sure,” he replied kindly. “Take your time.” I hurriedly glanced at the page, nervous about the fact that I had just written about five pages front and back about feelings, real feelings. After about 6 months of working with Dr. durka-durka Indian something, I had become really good at hiding my feelings. I had always written ridiculous stories into which no one could read and nothing personal entered. However, today I accidentally wrote the truth without realizing it. For a moment, I panicked. I quickly tried to edit out the parts about a dysfunctional giraffe family looking for treasure in all the wrong places until it hit me—no one, not even an Indian genius, would be able to decipher this one. Genius, pure genius.

By Jordan Wilson

First Line by David Lake

the outlaw

“If I’d known she could be so antagonistic, I would have kicked her down the stairs,” slurred the outlaw to the man at his left. He spoke in a tone which was apparently his version of a whisper, although the throaty, bellowing tenor made his boast audible to everyone at the table, and perhaps the rest of the old tavern. And that was clearly his intention.

The outlaw, they all knew, had escaped weeks earlier from jail in Wiki-up, the small dust blown town to the immediate South. They knew this because it’s the first thing he told them when he sat down. They had clearly been uneasy about a stranger, with an ominous presence such as his, standing a short distance away, watching them moving their chips and calling bets. So, apparently it was his idea of breaking the thickening ice telling them what he should have done to his ex-wife when she told him she didn't like his line of work. 

Now he sat, leaning forward on the front two legs of his chair with his thick barrel of a chest crouched over the edge of table, partly to conceal his cards, and partly, it seemed, to appear an aggressive card player another player might expect to play fast and loose and somewhat recklessly. The outlaw was drunk  and amicable toward the man at his left, but the way the corners of his mouths drew up into a mean smile when he was called and raised, along with the momentarily fixed gaze of those yellow eyes and pupils so black you forget their substance, no one at the table doubted he would kick a woman down a set of stairs. Even his own mother, to whom, as it happened, he had done much worse.

-bryce

The Finalist

By Chris Wei

(Opening line by Katie Chatterton)

Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders.  Don’t stretch yourself too thin.  Et cetera.  That’s the advice I get from my mother.

Don’t give in so easy.  Don’t sell yourself short.  Et cetera.  That’s the advice I get from my father.

It is hard sometimes to reconcile two widely varying worldviews like these.  It is hard to find a middle ground and discern where the truth is.  My mother and my father are both happy people but they look at most philosophical questions with opposite assumptions.  If you believe that a person’s philosophy is justified by their happiness level, then Mom and Dad are both right, even though they disagree.

It’s sort of confusing sometimes.  I have never thought of myself as much of a relativist before but in the past several years I have started to abandon the idea of absolute truth, of absolute right and wrong, of absolute certainty.

Not in all things.  There are a few things I still think are absolute.  Two plus two will always be four, innocent human life will always be worth protecting, and the original Star Wars trilogy will always be better than the prequels.

But other truths always seem to rely on circumstance.  Sometimes when I am exhausted from trying to do too much, I need to listen to my mother:  I need to stop trying to carry the world upon my shoulders.  But other times, when I am lazy, I think the opposite.  I don’t get lazy because I’m exhausted.  I get lazy because I’m depressed.  And I get depressed because I sell myself short and tell myself how incapable I am.  That’s when I need to listen to my father, and just keep pushing ahead.  “Don’t give in so easy,” he says.  Okay.  I won’t.

Yesterday is an example of when I needed to listen to my father.  I was a finalist in the annual Milwaukee hot dog eating contest.  And it was really difficult to get all those hot dogs down.  I wanted to give up.  My mother’s voice in the back of my head whispered, “don’t carry the world upon your shoulders.”  But she was wrong, of course.  The world, the world of hot dog championship, was indeed upon my shoulders and I needed to carry it.  I needed to gobble those wieners faster than my visiting Korean opponent.  For the honor of my family.  For the honor of Milwaukee.  For the honor of America.

The contest was grueling.  Sweat dripped down my brow as I stuffed the final six hot dogs in my mouth and started chewing.  My Korean enemy was finishing his last few as well, but chewing slower than I.  Maybe that was wishful thinking.  I couldn’t be sure.  My vision was blurring.

I closed my eyes and focused.

Eventually I prevailed.  But it was too much for my body to take, and I died.

When I got to Heaven, I was expecting St. Peter to put his arm around my shoulder and say, “your mother was right.  Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders.”  But he didn’t.

Instead, he shook my hand, smiling, and said “you sure ate a lot of hot dogs down there, son.”

The Life and Times of Steven G. Ratenstein

“It was a dark and stormy night and the only sound heard was a large rat scratching at the door…”

“Stop right there.  That’s an awful way to start a horror story.  It’s too cliché… it just feels like you’re a twelve-year-old boy scout telling a ghost story over the campfire.  You could probably give a toddler chills, but beyond that, it reads closer to comedy than anything else.  What did you say your book was about again?”

“It’s about a serial killer from Tennessee.  He has this special power where he can turn into a rat and…”

“That’s absolutely idiotic.  Give me the manuscript so that I can burn it and then toss it in a port-a-potty where it belongs.  You’re a hack.  My seven cats are probably all better writers than you are.  I don’t even know how you’ve published any books. “

“I haven’t.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.  Please do the world a favor and break all of your fingers so you can never write again.  Or better yet, kill yourself.  Yeah, do that.  That would be wonderful.  Now get out of my office.”

Paul was devastated.  He had spent the last four years of life writing his book, The Life and Times of Steven G. Ratenstein.  After all, he had plenty of free time.  Coming out of college with a degree in medieval literature, his only job offers had been as a jester at King Richard’s Faire and as a barista at Starbucks.  Since he could neither juggle nor make smiley faces in the foam of a latte, he opted to try his hand at writing a full-length novel.  Now, he had even failed at that.  He couldn’t seem to do anything right in his life.  He had no job.  He had no girlfriend.  His parents had kicked him out of their basement, forcing him to live in a dingy seventh-story apartment, sandwiched between a prostitute and a coke dealer.  His life was miserable.  Maybe the editor was right.  Maybe he should kill himself.  Fifteen minutes later, he found himself walking down the medicine aisle at Rite-Aid, looking for sleeping pills.  He grabbed six bottles, figuring it would be sufficient for his needs.  He arrived at the register, set down his manuscript, and fumbled around for his wallet.  The cashier, a pink-haired twenty-something with a nose ring, glanced at his manuscript and smiled.

“A writer, eh?”

“I try.”

“I dig writers.  My name’s Hope.  I get off at six.  What are you doing then?”

Paul smiled and finished paying.  On his way out, he dropped all six bottles of pills in the garbage can.  Hope had arrived.