Reminder - You can follow along with all of the bout results right HERE.
Here's the sixth and final cage bout before we move into the Playoff round. Once again, here's how WRiTE CLUB cage bouts work. Instead of two writers competing against one another, now it's THREE AT ONCE. But there's a twist. All of the winners have been given the opportunity to absorb the feedback offered during their preliminary round and submit an edited version of their original submission. As a writer, utilizing feedback can be a tricky proposition - because frankly - not all feedback is equal. This is our chance to see how the contestants used that feedback (if at all).
Remember, one of the real values of this contest is FEEDBACK. So, please be respectful with your remarks!
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“A New Page”
Dusk had
just turned the corner into night when an ambulance pulled up at my neighbor’s house.
Well, neighbor by proximity only. I didn’t even know his name. When I’d
moved here a year ago for the crown molding and the pine floors, he’d been
raking leaves, looking like the grandpa I barely remembered. I’d walked over to
say hello, but he didn’t speak first and my courage failed. And that’s a moment
you can’t get back, the one where the most natural thing to do is open your
world to someone else. This I’ve learned from a lifetime of letting hellos pass
me by. So for a year I’ve watched him shuffle out to get his mail and he’s
watched me water my petunias and we’ve never said a word.
But in an emergency, that moment circles back. I ran into his yard as they brought him out on a stretcher, his white hair dissheveled, an oxygen mask over his face. His rheumy gray eyes locked onto mine and he pulled the mask down long enough to gasp, “My cat. Will you feed my–” before a paramedic secured it again.
“Of course,” I said, watching them load him under spinning red lights. Then I ducked inside to the stench of mold and kitty litter. News buzzed from a corner of the den where a can of chicken noodle soup and a spoon had fallen to the floor. I picked them up, swallowing the prickle of fear that, give or take a few decades, this would be me.
“Here, kitty,” I said, glancing at an envelope on a stack of bills that covered the counter. J. Merritt. I was that much closer to his name, at least.
When no cat appeared, I stepped into the dark hall of every horror flick. “Kitty?”
A muffled bump answered. The cat. Just the cat. Still I grabbed for the light switch at the nearest room. Inset bulbs hummed on, reflecting off the last thing I expected. Rows of glass cases. The nearest held a yellowed volume, opened to Shakespeare’s Tempest. In the next, Marlowe’s Faustus stared up as a fluffy tabby materialized, twining around my legs. “What in the world, cat?”
That’s when I felt someone behind me. I turned, hackles rising, to the portrait of a woman, elegant and accusing. Her aquamarine eyes seemed to follow me out of the room as I fled back to the kitchen, banging through empty cabinets until I found three cans of Purr Delight. I dumped one in the bowl by the sink, trying to reel my imagination in. Still my thoughts kept drifting to that picture. Who was she? And who exactly was J. Merritt?
None of my business, that’s who.
On the way out, I snagged keys from the counter. I’d come again tomorrow, just to feed the cat and drop off some real food.
Definitely not to walk back down that hall.
The king sat at his desk, weariness threatening to drag him
into sleep. But he couldn’t sleep, not yet. There were letters to answer.
Problems to address. Double agents to recruit. He rubbed a hand across his
forehead before unrolling the newest scroll in his stack of unread mail.
He had barely broken the seal when he heard it: a quiet
cough.
The king sighed and set the scroll aside. “How long have you
been there, Ace?”
“Long enough.” There was a pause, and then the form of a man
in his mid-thirties flickered into existence by the door. He leaned against the
mantle, arms crossed. Bright violet eyes peered out of a heavily scarred face.
The king suppressed a shudder at Ace’s sudden appearance.
The man’s ability to watch from the shadows was unnatural and unnerving, yet it
had come in useful more than once. “Have you Seen something new?”
Ace frowned. He crossed the room and lowered himself into
the chair opposite the king. “You won’t win this war sitting behind your desk.”
“Is that a Seeing, or just advice?”
A brief smile tugged Ace’s lips up, making his scars seem
that much more gruesome. “Both.” He hesitated before continuing, “I see…beasts
of old. Power bounces back and forth, but there’s no finality, no conclusion.
The only clear thing is the opening of the sixth Vault. But I’ve been unable to
identify if it is our enemy who opens it, or us.”
The king remained silent, afraid his voice would tremble if
he spoke. For centuries, his family had guarded that Vault, protecting the
power that rested within it from those who would use it for evil. He’d sworn an
oath to only open it and use the power within if there was no other choice.
The time was coming to make that choice.
Many difficult decisions blocked his path forward, but now
one rose above the rest, a question that nagged every time he met with this
man.
Did he trust Ace enough to commit the entirety of his
resources based on the man’s word alone?
Ace had appeared out of nowhere nearly a decade ago. He had
unnatural power, more than any human should ever have, but for years now, the
man’s visions hadn’t steered the king wrong. Those visions had allowed the king
to stay a step ahead of the enemy.
Yet still, it worried him. Ace’s motivations were a mystery.
He appeared not to have family or a life, nothing to fight for. Yet if that was
the case, why lend his aid at all? There was something that the man was hiding,
and the king feared that secret might be his own undoing.
The entire Erminian kingdom hinged on his choices here and
now. On his instincts. He couldn’t afford to hesitate, couldn’t afford to
waver. It was a time for decisiveness.
The king rose to his feet. “It’s time to assemble our
forces. The Vault will not be breached.”
Payoff
Five minutes in the
bank line, and I’m hoping I get the attractive woman as my teller. Landing in
front of the older, married fella would be odd for both of us.
It works out. I approach the smiling Jillian, who certainly didn’t wake up this morning expecting the kind of deposit I’m going to make.
“Can I help you?” she says to me as I get to her plexiglass.
I make sure my phone is angled correctly, and while looking at her nametag, I get straight to it. “I’m in love with you, Jillian.”
Her lips curl into a scowl.
“Excuse me?” Her face defines dumbfounded.
I respond. “Sorry. I know we have never met, but when you know, you know. I saw you when I came in, I watched you while I was in line, and yeah, I’m definitely in love with you.”
Jillian looks side to side at her colleagues to see if any of them are responsible for me. When she realizes nobody at her workplace put me up to this, she looks back at me.
“I’m going to get my manager.” She makes a determined move like she is going to have a higher-up come over to bring me down.
“Wait. Hold on, Jillian. You don’t need to get anyone. I’m leaving. I just needed to say what was on my heart.”
I leave her there with a smile and a wink.
As I make my way out the front door, I turn off the video on my phone and quick text it to Jeff.
Jeff is the guy I lost the bet to, and he always insists on video proof of my payoff.
“Express your love to a complete stranger in a public place” was my bookie’s demand since I couldn’t pay my debt with cash.
I bet $500 on the Cowboys.
Never smart.
Especially when you
don’t have the money to pay.
Thankfully, Jeff is not a knuckle-breaking sort of bookie. He’s got a YouTube channel with a million followers, where he features fools like me shaming themselves in various ways to pay off their debts. He makes more money from advertisers than he would if I had paid him actual dollars.
Works out for both of us.
As I step into the bank parking lot, I approach my car, which has some worried people standing near it, pointing at the pounding coming from my trunk.
The sounds of my second payoff.
“Put a drunk stranger into your trunk for an hour.”
That was for the $4,000 bet I made on the Lakers.
And I do have video proof it wasn’t kidnapping – dumb, hammered college kid just climbed into my trunk thinking it was his pub-crawl Uber, I guess.
I comfort the onlookers. “Stupid, drunk fraternity dare.”
They buy it.
I’m sure glad the guy knocked. I had forgotten about him.
He’s been in there since last night.
I’m a jerk and an idiot -
With three more bets to pay off…
This is WRiTE CLUB—the contest where the audience gets clobbered!
