Judge This Week: Mars
Word Count: 300 max
How: Submit your stories as a comment to this post, along with your name, word count, and title (and Twitter handle or blog if you've got 'em!). One entry per person.
Deadline: 2 AM SUNDAY (3/19) PDT (I swear one of these days I'll be on time)
Results announced: Next Wednesday afternoon.
Remember: Your entry must begin with the prompt! The prompt can be mutilated, but not beyond recognition. (Pictures do not need to be incorporated into your stories; they're for inspiration (and amusement).)
Prompt
"By the way, I lied."
Alva Holland
ReplyDelete@Alva1206
299 words
Carry On
‘By the way, I lied.’
‘About what?’
‘Everything.’
‘Everything since this morning? Since yesterday? Since Maria was born? Since we got married? Since your parents told me I wasn’t good enough for you? Since our first date when I knew you were the one for me and you spilt your milkshake down my new denim shirt I’d borrowed from my brother? Since you moved in next door with your head of curls, your shy smile and your skipping rope trailing behind you as you ran down the garden?’
‘You’re such a drama pot, Ian. That shy smile was a grimace. The skipping rope belonged to my sister and I stole it and hid it behind the tool shed. That denim shirt didn’t fit you. You looked ridiculous. My parents never told you that you weren’t good enough for me. They behave like that with everyone. Our wedding day? How long ago is that? Maria? Were you there when she was born? What happened yesterday? Or this morning? You know I don’t remember insignificant events. Can’t you be more specific?’
‘Me? More specific? You said you lied. About everything.’
‘Oh that. Yes, I lied. He wasn’t a stranger.’
‘Who?’
‘The guy you saw me with at the coffee shop that day. I passed him off as a stranger standing in a queue with me. You believed me.’
‘Of course I believed you. What’s going on? Who was he?’
‘Your father. He was your father.’
‘My father? Jesus wept, my father is dead.’
‘No, not then. He called me. Said you thought he was dead but that’s what your mother wanted you to think. He felt I needed to know.’
‘Know what? Christ, this is crazy.’
‘He’s dead now.’
‘Shit, Karen.’ What’s going on?
‘Maria has Cystic Fibrosis. We’re both carriers.’
Bill Engleson
ReplyDelete300 little white power lies
@billmelaterplea
“I never lie. I believe everything I say, so it's not a lie.” Mark Wahlberg
“By the way, I lied. Go on, say it. Toss the words around on your tongue. Mix them up. Like a salad.”
“I don’t like salad.”
“Who doesn’t like salad?”
“Me. Never have.”
“You never had any salad days? You know, when your world was fresh, bright and green?”
“Is this some stupid Irish trick question?”
“No. It’s a saying. Anyways, we were talking about lying.”
“You were talking about lying. And YOU brought up the whole salad thing. I hate salad and I don’t lie.”
“How can you say that? Of course, you lie. Everyone lies…sometime. You bend the truth more than most.”
“Okay. Name one lie I’ve told. I dare you!”
“Where should I begin? Oh, I know. The wiretap thing. You said Obama wiretapped you.”
“Repeating something said by a reliable news outlet…and there are only a few…is not lying. It’s sharing information.”
“Even if it’s not true.”
“You and the crooked media say its not true. Look, Spicer has this quote from Conan Doyle, that Sherlock Holmes guy. It’s a great quote. Love it. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
“So…?”
“Do you think its impossible that Obama wiretapped me? It’s possible, right?”
“Ah…”
“Right. Be honest.”
“Anything’s possible, I guess.”
“There you go. Look, when you come right down to it, everyone lies. Nixon lied. Clinton lied. You think I don’t know what’s going on in my head? There’s a term I’ve used forever…truthful hyperbole. It won’t work for everyone. The people trust me. I tell it like it is. To do that, I garnish my words. How else are people going to remember what is truth and what isn’t? Right!”
“You make my head spin. I gotta lay down.”
“It’s lie down. Ain’t language a bitch!”
Word count: 298
ReplyDeleteAngelique Pacheco
The wheel turns
“By the way, I lied.” My jaw dropped, my heart turned into ice and the world tilted off its axis. “What? No. It can’t be,” I thought. Because if it was, I had just destroyed the life I had built for myself.
Greg had started acting strangely about three months ago. There were the lies about having to work late. I tried to stem the flicker of suspicion but it burst into flame and spread like wildfire. I phoned his office almost obsessively trying to hold onto what was slipping through my fingers. He became secretive about his phone and wouldn’t even go to bed without it. There were phone calls at all hours and he claimed that they were work related. Who was he kidding? I knew better. He was having an affair.
In order to protect my heart, I began shifting the gears in my head regarding my relationship. I guess it’s easier when you have nothing left to fight for. A man at the gym invited me out for coffee and I accepted. Three hours later I lay in his arms in a motel room, sated yet empty. Funny, I can’t even remember his name now. I’m not sure if he ever mentioned it.
We are on the beach. I stare at a table in front of me decorated with flowers. A violinist stands to one side. It is sunset. The exact proposal scenario I wrote in my diary when I was just ten years old. But instead of joy I feel dread. This is when he tells me he lied. He goes down on one knee and asks me to marry him.
Tears spill down my face as I tell him what I have done. It is now time for his jaw to drop.
@firdausp
ReplyDelete(300 words)
Lies
"By the way, I lied," I said nervously, nibbling the styrofoam cup. The tea was cold.
He frowned, "Which part?"
"Most of it," I took the last sip, gulping down the tepid liquid, dreading what was to come.
He put down his cup, his eyes as hard as the iron table in front of us.
The sound of honking and general chaos of a bus stand filtered in through the window of the small room which served as a canteen.
"I don't have an alcoholic father who beats me up," I shifted uncomfortably in the plastic chair.
"And your mother?"
"Probably dead," I shrugged, "I ran away from an orphanage."
He leaned back in his chair watching me with hooded eyes.
This stranger had been kind. Bought me breakfast when he had found me crying outside the bus stand, and I had blurted those lies.
His wife had been impatient and a little peeved when he had suggested tea and something to eat. Now she sat at the edge of her chair fidgeting.
"You remind me of my sister," he'd said, "she's ten too."
Somehow he had made me feel safe and I had followed him to the canteen.
"Come to my place," he offered, "my sister would love the company."
I had nowhere else to go.
An auto-rickshaw took us to the edge of town. His wife didn't get off with us.
We took the stairs up to his room in a dilapidated building. I didn't see anyone around.
"Where did your wife go?" I asked, uncomfortable.
We entered a small damp room with a cot in the middle.
Shutting the door behind us he said, "She's not my wife."
"And your sister..." my voice faded away as I looked into his eyes.
"I lied too," he whispered menacingly.
Turn The Other Cheek
ReplyDeleteBenjamin Langley
@B_J_Langley
300 words
“By the way, I lied,” says Lygor, his face scrunched up, his back hunched.
Your sword drops from the parry position you normally hold before opening a dungeon door and you let it point at the charcoal ground.
Lygor pushes the door open a crack and you reel back from the heat ebbing through. “You’re not the chosen one.” He smiles, showing his maggot-coloured teeth.
The foul breath that you’ve tolerated throughout your supposed hero’s journey again offends your nostrils. You tighten your grip on your sword but can’t raise it, the weight of the amulet around your neck sapping your strength.
“No,” says Lygor, his voice high, “you’re just another meal for my master.”
He shoves you through the door and you see her, Drexyl the Destroyer, the harvester of souls, the fire-breathing, steel-scaled, rock-fisted behemoth.
Lygor scurries in and closes the door, and scampers to the corner rubbing his hands gleefully.
You can’t move. The trembling is involuntary, growing as Drexyl steps towards you. She inhales, and you know, as moon follows sun, as day follows night, that exhale follows inhale, and when Drexyl exhales it is with fire, and wrath, and death.
“Silly hero,” mocks Lygor. “The chosen one. He thought the scar on his cheek was a sign.”
You drop your sword; the amulet around your neck is so heavy that it’s compelling you to collapse to the floor.
“But the scar… it’s on the wrong cheek.” Lygor giggles.
But Lygor doesn’t know about your other scar – on your other set of cheeks.
Drexyl exhales and the fire comes with it. You drop to your knees and the amulet comes to life, taking in that blast.
“You didn’t lie,” you say. “You only thought you did.”
You pick up your sword, ready to end the curse.