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SOUTH REGION | First Round
Wherever You Go, There You Are
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
He awoke surrounded by the general din one would normally associate with the downtown
of any major city; buses growling from one stop to another huffing plumes of soot
from tailpipes that stretched vertically to their brightly painted roofs, noonday
noises of office workers noshing and kvetching, and the sound of well-
...The light changed again and the young lady patted his hand then crossed the street leaving Scott Urban staring after her. He could now recall who he was and what he did for a living, but not what had brought him into the center of the city or how he’d gotten there. Not in any literal sense anyway.
Hearing another voice drawing near, Scott turned in time to catch sight of a man attired in the usual boring business garb—the ubiquitous pinstriped coat and trousers—topped off with a red power tie. The fellow seemed to be conducting a dialogue with God or perhaps channeling some inner muse. Scott couldn’t understand why this should startle him, but it did. He felt his guts twisting into knots and wanted to run in the opposite direction.
“Okay, so send him on his way with forty dollars and we’ll call it a deal,” said the man in the suit. The guy nodded then turned revealing a wireless headset plugged into his ear. Scott closed his eyes, relieved, giving himself a moment to decompress from the scare, to relax his sluggish brain. Why was that so frightening? So what if a person hears voices? And what does it matter if—
“If it’s all one’s imagination running wild,” Scott said.
The man glanced in his direction and gave Scott a dirty look then turned the other way and continued his conversation.
“Well, you’re not winning.”
Neither am I, thought Scott. I’m losing ground here. I’m standing on a corner surrounded by random events. I have no ...
Genesis
University of Miami
Open the fridge. Close the door. Leave the kitchen. Don’t look back.
It might have been when you were sitting in the car with your ex-
...You remember this because your father died suddenly, like he was in a hurry to go, and nobody bothered to turn off the TV. You were split in half. A part of you feeling the flesh of your father’s mitt of a hand, most of you watching the big mobster breaking down slowly, for everybody to see. It was funny because your father was dying and all you could hear was the mobster’s big mouth. “Fuck,” he said, cradling his forehead in his hands, and then he agreed. “Okay,” he said, while your mother tried to fuse her body to your father’s dead one as his flesh grew cold, “so send him on his way with forty dollars, and we’ll call it a deal.” Your boyfriend, he went to the funeral with you, but then he dumped you in January. So, you moved a little farther away, and you wonder if they ever did make that deal.
You hold your knees together and band them with your arms. The mobster is taking out a hit on somebody. The planning is elaborate, and though you don’t quite understand what is going on, you are crying for reasons that have sunk so deep that they anchor you in place. The phone rings, and you tell yourself that you don’t hear it, that it’s a part of the show that’s going on in front of your blurry eyes because at this point, what else is there to say?
The camera focuses in on the mobster’s wife, who is in the kitchen, drying dishes, and talking to her two children about what it means to make the right decisions. Somehow, it all seems a lot easier on TV. When you still lived at your mother’s house, when your father was still alive and you felt like the world was waiting for you, you would make fun of him for sitting in his chair and drinking gin and watching reruns of this stupid show, night after night. “Kiddo,” he’d said one Saturday night while ...
Prompt Two, South Region, Round 1.
"Wherever You Go..." by Vance [40.2%]
"Genesis" by Cutler [59.8%]