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Prompt One

EAST-SOUTH | Second Round

Summertown

Alexander Yates

Syracuse University

I believed in Summertown from the very beginning.  From the very first time I saw it out the window of Dad’s station wagon.  We were zooming up route 81, the car full of my sisters and our pets and what furniture was left after the fire.  Florida was nothing but a terrible memory, miles behind us. Summertown loomed to the north, its massive glass dome sparkling in brilliant sunlight, all jeweled over with ice crystals from a late June frost. “New home, dead ahead,” Dad announced.  My sisters ooed and ahhed.  My mother said it looked like a Christmas gift.  In some kind of silly mom way she was right.  From a distance, and satellite photos, Summertown resembled one of those snow globes you used to see people getting as presents in movies when you were a kid.  Only it was different, because at Summertown all the flurries and forlorn pine trees were on the outside, and the warm cozy living room was on the inside.  The massive glass dome stretched from the eastern shore of Onondaga Lake, all the way to Erie Boulevard, which used to be the Erie Canal.  Wait, what am I saying—stretched?  Stretches!  Summertown still looks exactly as it used to.  It’s still in one piece, thank God.

Dad used to have a friend at the corporate headquarters, and so he got a good job for which he was under-qualified.  Deputy Security Chief for West Summertown, including the Lakefront, the Old Mall, Central Office and the French Quarter.  I guess it was the start of what you could call a dynasty, because that’s my job now.  Deputy Security Chief.  I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty good at it.  Better than my Dad was.  West Summertown has been without incident since I took over...

...Pacheco stops typing away at the computer.  “Can’t do it, my friend.”  He radios back in his throaty, charming way.  “I’m busy.”

“Ha.  Busy doing what?”

He perks up.  “Where are you?”

“At home.  I’m having a lie-down with my old lady.  What’s got you busy?”

He turns to look back at the vault-style door, but as he does his elbow hits the printer and sends it tumbling to the floor with a plastickey crash.  His shoulders dip and his neck scrunches up like someone afraid of being hit.

“What was that?” I push him.

“I’m in the Explanatory.”  He’s totally cool.  “A humming owl’s got loose from the Aviary, and it’s knocking into the display cases.  My boys and I are trying to catch hold of it.”

“That sounds serious.  I’ll be right there.”

“No, don’t worry about it.”

“Mm hmmm.”  I very convincingly mimic the sound of tying my shoelaces.  “All set.  Be there in a minute.”

“Don’t worry about it, everything’s fine.”

I huff and puff, like I’m running down my condo steps.

“Hey,” he says.  “Hey.  No.  All right, I’m not in the Explanatory.”

I stop huffing and puffing.  “I don’t understand.”

“Listen,” he says.  “I’ll be honest with you.  I’m in women’s fashion.”  He knows I hate women’s fashion...

Mister James

G. Warlock Vance

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

James heard the annoying chirp of the cell phone knowing it was one of the two CEOs from the Selma Corporation.  He knew he ought to remember the guy’s name, but it wouldn’t come to him.  The other one had been called Aickman.  He knew that because he’d just shot him in the head and dumped the body in a landfill near the west side of Cleveland, Ohio.  The phone kept ringing.  He withdrew it from the pocket of his overcoat and flipped it open.

“Yes.”

The voice on the line sounded nervous.  Most individuals who found themselves on the other end of a phone from him usually sounded that way—at least the ones with any brains.  He held the device tightly to his ear while the wind off the water made his coattails flap and blew his scarf around his face like a death shroud. The voice was that of a man who would surely die of a heart attack before reaching his fiftieth year unless he learned to relax.  Breathe, thought James, but whether he’d meant it toward his client or to himself as an exercise in patience he could not be certain.

“No, don’t worry about it,” he said.

The high-pitched tone which squeaked through the receiver in a tinny whine let James know that the party was far from reassured.  He listened to what amounted to a ludicrous diatribe—the person trying to come to terms with his guilt even though he’d hired James to carry out the dirty work.

“Mm hmm,” he agreed, nodding his head slightly even though the listener could not see him.  He’d gotten into the habit of doing this during that period of his life when he’d lived in Japan—when he’d trained for just this sort of thing.

“Don’t worry about it, everything’s fine,” James growled, “now get off the fuckin’ line before it is no longer fine and I have to do to you what you paid me to do to Aickman.”

There was a moment of silence—one blessed instant where it seemed as if the entire world disappeared.  James basked in that serenity.  To achieve a similar state of calm nothingness was his aspiration.  To find a blissful state of solitude where he could read novels, meditate on his own omphalos-like point of peace, and where—

But the asshole was back, simpering into the line with fawning admiration, so sorry to have doubted and…

And James told him to hang up and that the phone number he’d just used would no longer function.  James snapped the phone shut before the voice could conclude the call.  There had been a “Good—” followed by the click and then James threw it out as far as he could into the depths of Lake Erie.

Good, he thought, took in a chilly breath and said “Riddance.”

Later, after he’d eaten a light meal and had his fill of hot tea, James entered the lobby of the hotel where he was staying.  In most action films and adventure stories men in his line of work always hid out in skuzzy flophouses, some of which doubled as brothels.  He knew from experience that he was less likely to be seen in the higher-priced establishments because there was far more foot traffic and because the vast majority of these places employed young men and women working on business degrees or who were trying to get enough experience to make it in some other area of hotel management.  Most seemed attentive, yet usually stared through their customers praying for as many smooth, complaint-free encounters as possible.

Understanding these parameters, James never asked for extra services...

Prompt One, East-South, Round 2.

"Summertown" by Yates [57.5%]

"Mister James" by Vance [42.5%]

Go to Prompt 1 Finals