WRiTE CLUB 2020 - Cage Bout #5

Reminder - You can follow along with all of the bout results right HERE.

It's CAGE BOUT time!

Here's how this works. 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).

The readers/voters are to choose one of the three to move on.  There will be six daily bouts (Mon-Sat), and no saves this time.

Remember, one of the real values of this contest is FEEDBACK. So, please be respectful with your remarks!

Even though there will be a different bout every day (M-S), because of time restrictions the voting period will be staggered somewhat, so please pay attention to the dates posted. The voting for today’s bout will close on Thursday, June 11th (noon central time).

The piece that garnishes the most votes will move on to the next round where they’ll face a different opponent with a BRAND NEW WRITING SAMPLE. 

As always, in case of a tie, I’m the deciding vote.

Here are the voting guidelines –

1) One vote per visitor per bout.

2) Anyone can vote (even the contestants themselves), but although our contestants are anonymous, voters cannot be. Anonymous votes will not count, so if you do not have a Google account and are voting as a guest, be sure to include your name and email address.

3) Using any method (email, social media, text, etc) to solicit votes for a specific contestant will cause that contestant's immediate disqualification. It’s perfectly okay, in fact, it is encouraged to spread the word about the contest to get more people to vote, just not for a specific writer!

4) Although more of a suggestion than a rule - cast your vote before you read other comments. Do not let yourself be swayed by the opinions of others.

Here our the contestants for this first cage bout (in random order) are -

Scottish

The Puzzle 

 

 The Tinker’s Damn was shrouded in gloom. Sunlight from the open door stopped a few feet within and would go no further. When old man Macomber entered the shop, he brought more gloom with him.

 “Shopkeeper. Bring a lantern,” he shouted, unable to see what was on the shelves.

 An old crone, her hair like spiderwebs crisscrossing her skull, appeared behind him. She knew him, the moneylender who held the mortgage on her shop. The interest was outrageous, damning her to poverty.

 “No lantern today. Can’t afford the oil.”

 “For heaven’s sake, woman,” he said, startled. “Announce yourself next time.”

 “What are you looking for?”

 “I don’t know,” he grumbled. “Amusement. Something to cure my boredom with life, and people, I suppose.”

 She disappeared for a moment, then returned with a black box.

 “What is it?” he asked. “Am I supposed to guess?”

 “Something from the orient. A magical puzzle brought to the continent by a ship’s captain in 1815, the very one he played with aboard ship. It will cure what ails you.”

 “We’ll see about that,” he said, seeing hatred in her face. He wondered why he could never remember her name.

 Later that night, Macomber examined the black box. There was no drawing or caption, no hint of the image. He dumped pieces of various colors from the box and spread them around the table. Finding the edges was the easy part. The rest was maddening.

 Many times, he started over and for many hours he worked. He forgot to eat and did not go to bed. Night became day, and he forgot his business and his many enemies. Absorbed by the puzzle, he worked in vain cursing the orient, cursing the crone, then cursing himself. How many times did he gather the pieces and put them back in the box? Many times, over many days. The compulsion to try again would force him to return to the table and lay the pieces out.  

 The puzzle ensnared Macomber, and not until he was weak with deprivation, his mind shattered and his body soiled, did the image reveal itself. It was a grotesque hunchback in tattered clothing with the flaming red eyes of a demon, a mouthful of shark’s teeth, and the claws of a panther.

 When the last piece was in place, the table began to vibrate. Smoke engulfed him, stinging his eyes. Macomber’s eardrums burst when the puzzle pieces exploded and the hunchback’s hand erupted through the table and grabbed him by the throat. It choked the breath from him and pulled him down into the underworld.

Then the puzzle reassembled itself. The image of the Hunchback had been replaced by Macomber, his eyes wide with terror and his mouth open in a silent scream.

 The old crone came through the door. She gathered the pieces of the puzzle and put them back in the black box, then returned to The Tinker’s Damn, quite contented.

---

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Contestant number two is Edward Bear

Last Confession

 

Mason Unger’s frail body moved into the MRI scanner for the final time, but his mind took him far away. The hum of the smooth walls that surrounded him and the beeps of monitors faded. The pain in his chest -- caused by the advanced cancer he’d fought for years -- was replaced with a memory.

He was eight, face to face with his best friend, Sylvia Foss. The fragrance of honeysuckle encircled them like a living wreath, and the sky above made their eyes ache to look at such blue. She laughed as she ducked through the secret entrance, and the curls on her forehead bobbed.

It was three decades later, but he still heard her clearly. “Our hideout is lovely, isn’t it?”

“It’s a fort, Sylvia -- and it needs to be defended.”

She drew in the dirt with her finger. “It’s still lovely.”

“Okay in there?” The MRI tech’s voice broke in through the speaker.

Without seeing anything but Sylvia, without losing the scent of one honeysuckle blossom, Mason said, “I’m okay.”

But he was not -- neither then as he slowly perished in the machine, nor on the day of Sylvia’s death. 

The weight of this conviction grew with him: the cancer began that day. He knew it to be true, for his chest had turned to lead immediately after her accident.

Even so, he ran.

He ran through the nearby woods until his whole body burned, until he fell and skinned his shins and knees. The pain was no escape from the agony of her last horrified glance at him -- from the agony of Sylvia lost.

Later, once he’d limped home, his mother used camphor to soothe his cuts. Now in the machine, the smell choked out the scent of the sweet flowers, haunting his sick body as he lay there on his back, his arms pinned against his sides. It repulsed him -- as it had then -- and he retched. It was in his eyes, his nostrils; he could feel it seeping into his shins, where the wounds had been. And when he breathed, now, in the coffin-like tube, his lungs filled with the camphor from long ago; it was an indictment he deserved.

“Sylvia?” Mason directed the question at his mother, who sat next to his bed in the rocking chair, but the MRI tech answered.

“Just a minute more.”

“No! It was my fault -- I --”

“Mason, you were playing a game.” His mother’s voice was calm, reassuring. “It was an accident.”

“No -- I insisted we play in our fort. By the road. She kept saying ‘It’s lovely,’ I -- I got mad -- I pushed her --” Mason gasped, “I’m sorry, Sylvia.” The weight inside, near his heart now, burned as he confessed. “I’m so sorry.” In a flash she was gone from him, as on that day, for the busy street took her. Soon, he was taken as well: Sylvia and Mason hand in hand, honeysuckle forever following them where guilt and cancer cannot go.

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And finally number three is Valley Bird

Mom’s dancing when I get back to the living room.  She clutches the bottle of bourbon in one fist as she sways to the music.  When the verse begins, she raises the bottle to her mouth like a microphone and starts singing into it.  I stand in the doorway for a second, watching.

From the speakers, my mother’s voice blazes out, that strong pure alto I remember from sitting proudly at the side of stage after stage.  The voice that won her awards and accolades, got her offers of movie roles and sold out stadiums.

What comes from my mother’s mouth now is ragged and raw.  She can still hit the notes, but there’s no purity now.  Her voice is a hoarse, ruined parody of what’s playing through the speakers.  Like how she still dresses the same way she did back then; dresses that flowed around her narrow frame now cling snugly to her drink-bloated stomach, strain across her hips.

She spins around and takes a swig from her “microphone”, staggering backward as she does.  Her heel catches the edge of the rug and she falls, crashing onto the coffee table on her ass.  It cracks under her and dumps her to the ground amid a cascade of old magazines.

I wince.

“Ooopsy daisy!”  Mom sees me in the doorway and drags herself up, leaning heavily on the ruined furniture.  “Mommy’s clumsy today.”

“Mommy’s drunk,” I say.  “As usual.”

“I’m not drunk, baby boy.”  Mom sways on her feet and looks blearily around for her bottle.  She finds it under the magazines, empty now, the remaining bourbon soaking into the filthy carpet. 

“No?”  I watch her shaking the bottle over her mouth, trying to get any last liquor out.  “Looks that way to me.”

“You worry to much.  I’m fine, Bluebell.  I’m celebratin’”

Celebrating?  What the hell does she have to celebrate?  Kicking the shit out of my brother? Terrifying the other one so much he barely speaks?  “Don’t call me Bluebell.”

“Oh, I forgot.  My baby boy is too big for pet names.”

I roll my eyes, but ignore it.  There are more important things to deal with.  “I think it’s bedtime,” I say, tugging the bottle away from her and setting it on the broken table.  “You’ve had enough.”

“Darlin’,” she snarls, leaping away from me.  “I haven’t even started yet.”

She reaches into the stereo cabinet and pulls out another bottle, this one smaller and slimmer.  She unscrews the cap and takes a healthy belt.  “Damn.  That’s the stuff.  Here,” she holds the bottle out to me.  “Have a drink, baby.  You know I don’t like to drink alone.”

I take the bottle, but don’t take a sip.  For someone who doesn’t like drinking by herself, she spends a lot of time doing it.  Like, every day.  All day.  Since giving up singing, drinking has been her career.

Who am I kidding?  She never gave up singing. People just didn’t want to hear her anymore.

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Please leave your votes and critiques in the comments below. Again, be respectful of your remarks and try to point out positives as well as detraction's.

We’ll be back tomorrow with another cage bout. Please help all our writers out by telling everyone you know what is happening here and encourage them to come vote.

This is WRiTE CLUB—the contest where the audience gets clobbered!

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