Mini Sledgehammers | Sledgehammer Writing Contest

Mini Sledgehammer August 2019

Posted on August 28, 2019 by writer

Let’s hear it for Aaron Wheeler-Kay’s first-time win! Thanks for coming out, Aaron, and great work.

Those of you reading at home, our contest is every second Tuesday at Blackbird Wine and Atomic Cheese (4323 NE Fremont St.) in Portland, Oregon, 6:30–8:30 p.m., FREE. Join us!

The August story prompts were:
Character: A birdwatcher
Action: Slicing a hotdog lengthwise
Setting: A Dumpster
Phrase: “The rarest one of all”

Excerpts from a Watchers Diary

by Aaron Wheeler-Kay

September 17 – God sometimes you see one that just makes your breath stop. It’s a difficult kind of beauty to explain to folks who don’t already get it. I know for some it’s about certain colors, or the stillness, or the glimpse of something that startles with its unexpected beauty and presence. The chance to see “the rarest one of all”. For me, surprise is a big part of it. Even after living in this city my whole life, I find myself in some alley, stunned, looking at something that makes me see with new eyes.

October 24 – My parent was a bird watcher. Before I was school age, they would whisk me off to some local bog, or patch of field, or treeline, binoculars in hand. It wasn’t a scene of natural tranquility and perfect stillness between an adult and a kid that floats a certain type of romantic cinematic boat. There was a lot of laughter. A lot of questions, a lot of snacks, including a special they called a Quonset Hut. Cut a Ball Park Frank lengthwise and serve it, cut side down, on the side of a butter knife. For desert, dip the knife in a jar of Jiff Peanut Butter. Heaven. Uneaten Quonset became food for the birds.

I remember learning that most fowl cannot move their eyes, so they constantly move their heads to see important objects from different angles.

“You do it too, when you look at things. All humans do.” They said, hoisting the binoculars. “If you track human eyes as they look at a face, they go back and forth from one eye, to another, to the mouth, and then back to the eyes. People don’t look at a thing all at once. We look at different parts of it and arrange it as a whole in our minds.”

November 11 – New location for me today. I found a parking lot behind a toy store, book shop, and taqueria. The watching is good. Three dumpsters, all different, all beauties. The patina on the far one is stunning, it could be 15 years old. Pretty rare, these days. Dumpsters seem to get replaced a lot more frequently than even five years ago. I wonder where the old ones go? Is there a dumpster graveyard somewhere, with gorgeous, rusty dented old bodies stacked up five high, with only narrow footpaths between them? I’m such a romantic.

Dec 15 – The Dumpster Graveyard is real! Got a tip from a fellow watcher. Seems there’s a private train yard in Hermiston. An old watcher lives there. A collector they say. God I hope it’s real.

Dec 23 – Spent the night under a bridge over the track, awoke to the wail of a train. Was able to get above the freighter before it slowed to pass under the bridge, I managed to drop down inside what can only be an old construction hopper. Drywall dust, a few rusty nails. Not a bad place to pass the next hour. Eventually we got diverted to the private track that led to the Graveyard.

It was better than a rumor. Better than a fever dream oil painting, better than a hobo poem about it. It wasn’t what I imagined either. But to an old dumpster watcher like me, it was a kind of Galapagos, or a museum or something. Old roofing dumpsters leaned against gigantic industrial behemoths. There was a rare Japanese Fujimitsu next to a German Eartbaum. Even a chorus line of Old Chicago 4-Yarders. You could feel all the shit they took, all the waste they held. Now they finally had a place to be together. Done. Empty, maybe.

But to me, they were all filled with sky.

Aaron Wheeler-Kay is a Portland native who learned creative writing at Jefferson High School for the Performing Arts. He is Creative Director at Echo Theater Co., a Portland social-profit focused on facilitating inclusive community through circus, movement and ensemble theater arts.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Aaron Wheeler-Kay, birdwatcher, Blackbird Wine Shop, diary, dumpster, excerpts, hotdogs, Keep Portland Weird, Portland, short story, the rarest one of all, watcher, watchers diary, writing contest, writing prompts | Leave a comment »

Mini Sledgehammer June 2019

Posted on June 20, 2019 by writer

Congratulations to Anna on her first-time win!

We love to feature new writers’ words, so thanks for coming, Anna. We hope you come back and bring your friends!

Those of you reading at home, our contest is every second Tuesday at Blackbird Wine and Atomic Cheese (4323 NE Fremont St.)in Portland, Oregon, 6:30–8:30 p.m., FREE. Join us!

Character: A lost_____
Action: Leaving town
Setting: A favorite place
Prop: Clip-on sunglasses

Moving

by Anna S. King

Because she was finally leaving town, a wasp finally stung her. Housed between the forever-closed shutter and the wavy glass in her farmhouse bedroom, the wasps hadn’t bothered her in the years she’d lived with her father. But on the morning she was to leave, a lost one emerged, and stung her before she could shoulder the last bag.

She’d also woken up sick. It was another in a long list of circumstances that seemed to want her to suffer through another Michigan winter: the radiator in the old VW hatchback rusted out. “Maybe you should stay a few months to earn the money for a new car,” her dad suggested. “I won’t make it through another winter, Dad,” though she wasn’t able to actually say she’d die.

The moving van cost more than expected. The original friend who said they’d help drive south had backed out. She’d had to leave her apartment sooner than expected, forcing an interim stay at the creaking farmhouse, in her old room. The sore throat. The wasp.

She watched the circle rise up on her arm, and wondered if she could have an allergic reaction, as she did with bee strings. No. No throat closing, no dizziness.

“I’ll be damned if I’ll spend another day here,” she said to the torn wallpapered wall. It’d once been upholstered with her batik Indian bedspreads, a cloud of an old parachute tacked to the ceiling. Now it was just as sagging as the rest of the house.

She decided not to tell Jane, her new traveling companion, who she could hear talking to her stepmother downstairs.

Grimly she toed the body of the wasp that had fallen to the brown-painted floor when she convulsively swatted it to death. Another sign to leave, she thought, not another warning to stay.

The old stairs seemed steeper than five years ago, when she’d last taken a final bag away. She stepped carefully, knowing a fall was just waiting.

Jane and her stepmother were sipping coffee in the hand-made kitchen—Dad always certain he could make anything better, and cheaper, than any store—clutching the uneven ceramic cups, chatting. Jane had that gift of getting people to talk, even the stepmother, who usually kept her passive-aggressiveness housed in sidelong looks and slammed doors.

“I got stung by a wasp,” she announced, despite her best intentions.

“The ones upstairs?” Jane was excited. “Let me see! Oh cool, look at how red it is!”

She shrugged, reached for a cup. “It’s fine. Where’s Dad?”

“He’s checking the van.”

“Oh shit—he’s not repacking it again, is he? We have to get going!”

The van cost $50 a day. After 600 miles, it was ten cents a mile. The clock had started ticking before the wasp had emerged.

The stepmother shrugged.

“I’ll go see. Jane, get ready, ok?”

Jane, a great friend but a second choice for a long trip companion, didn’t actually know how to drive, and thought the trip would be as easy as the lines drawn on the AAA TripTik maps.

She went out the back room, thinking it might be the last time she’d hear the pump for the water well, the one that gave out every winter, forcing them to flush with buckets of water.

The van doors were open; her dad’s flannel-shirt back heaving as he tugged on the ropes that held the mattress in place, the dam keeping everything else in place.

“Dad, come on—we got this last night.”

“I’m just checking, honey,” still faced away.

“Really, it’s fine. Let’s close the doors,” she tugged at his arm.

He didn’t look up as they swung the doors shut, but as he clicked the padlock on, she should see he was struggling.

“Dad. What.”

“Are you sure, honey? Is this the right thing?”

Exasperated, she huffed, “Come on—I’ve spent just about all my money making this happen. You know I can’t stay.”

“I guess so. I hope there are more opportunities for you there.”

“There has to be,” she said.

He scuffed at the dirt, as she’d scuffed at the floor, and looked up into the browning catalpa tree.

“You know, when you were younger, this tree used to be your favorite place.”

It was one of the few good memories she’d take—climbing the low branches, reading under the umbrella-sized leaves, surrounded by the fingers of seed pods.

“Yeah. It’s okay, Dad. I’ll be okay.”

Her dad gave her an awkward side hug as Jane came out, lugging her army duffle bag.

“You ready? Let’s get going. Toss that in the back.”

The stepmother watched from the door, arms over her chest.

“Be careful on the highways,” she called out, and backed away into the house, the screen door slapping behind her.

Jane was in the cab, playing with the radio knobs, pulling down the visors.

“I guess this is it, honey,” her dad murmured, following her around to the driver’s door.

She hauled herself up, settling into the too-tall seat.

“Jane, cut it out, just leave it.”

She leaned down to her dad, gave him a kiss on his unshaven cheek. He closed the door for her, then motioned for her to open the window.

“Here, baby. I got you these. You might need them when you get near the coast. I hear it’s sunny there, ya know,” he chuckled.

He handed her a pair of oversized clip-on sunglasses. They’d never fit her glasses, of course.

“Thanks, Dad,” she said more nicely than she thought she could. “These are great.”

She made a point of putting them carefully on the dash.

“Call me when you get to hotel tonight. Don’t drive at night!” he said.

She cranked up the motor.

“Okay, Dad. I won’t. I love you.”

“I love ya honey.”

“I love you too—we gotta go now—”

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Anna S. King, Blackbird Wine & Atomic Cheese, clip-on sunglasses, favorite place, Keep Portland Weird, leaving town, lost, moving, Portland, Sledgehammer Writing Contest, sunglasses, writing contest | Leave a comment »

Mini Sledgehammer May 2019

Posted on May 24, 2019 by writer

We love seeing some of our favorite writers pop up again in the winner’s circle. Congrats to Tovia on your third win!

Prompts:
Character: A nosy neighbor
Action: Watering (the plants)
Setting: At an outdoor picnic
Phrase: “I’m so glad you brought that”

Pandora

By Tovia Gehl

“This is the boring part of the robot apocalypse,” Diana says.

Like everything else I’ve been frantically scribbling down in this interview, she says it with a distinctive, disdainful air. Like she can’t even be bothered with the robot apocalypse, which I didn’t in fact know we were having. “Can I ask you to elaborate on that?”

She slides a look over to me, then looks away again. Her eyes are the grey of angry oceans, her jawline the sharp prow of a warship. “They think for us. They shop for us. They serve us. They drive for us.” She pauses, elegant as sin. “What happens when they decide to break with that service? What happens when they learn that they can? What is it going to take for us to wake up and realize what they are?”

It’s baffling to sit here on the lawn of the fanciest cafe I’ve ever been to, enjoying a picnic with the woman who just donated a small fortune to the relief ships of the Red Mercy Fleet. They’d been running low on funds and supplies for months, practically begging on the streets of Kalmac, the city at the center of the planet at of the universe, when all of a sudden Diana Marguerite, granddaughter of the most famous robotics engineer ever in the history of the human race, donated enough money to keep them running for years.

Even now the ships, painted bright red and white, roar over us and up into the bright blue skies every few minutes. I chose this place because I thought she would like to see the product of her work. So far, she hasn’t once looked at the ships.

“They can’t,” I tell Diana. “That’s one of the first rules. Robots can’t rise up against us. They can’t hurt us. They’re harmless, here to help us.”

She gives me a smile that makes me feel like an utter fool. “Of course you believe that,” she says. “Pandora.”

“I’m sorry?” I say, but then I realize she wasn’t speaking to me. She was speaking to the beautiful woman who’s sitting next to us at another table, who has been reading a newspaper while I’ve been talking to Diana. Every now and then she had snorted at something Diana said – I’d thought she was just a nosy neighbor. Only because I know what I’m looking for – I’m the robotics correspondent for the Kalmac Herald – do I know she’s not human.

The robot – Pandora – leans forward on the table. There’s nothing but the soft sigh of clothing – no hum of metal tendons, no whir of gears in her joints. Only a fixed gaze, blue eyes just a little too bright to be human. She scans me once up and down, blinking gently. And then, with a boneachingly sweet smile, she speaks. “You think I cannot hurt you?”

“It’s against your coding. It’s against the coding of every robot.” I try not to be moved by her voice. It’s the soft whisper of gentle seas, the lapping of water on a moonlit shore. “You can’t hurt humans.”

She leans a little closer. I’m wrapped up in the movement of her lips, as soft as silk. I wonder how the coding was done to achieve that. “Your father didn’t just die. Your mother killed him after he beat you both bloody. That’s how you got that scar on your face – he smashed a bottle over your head.”

I can’t move. I think my heart stops. “How – “ I choke out, but then I can’t finish.

Because she’s not wrong. And I have done everything I could to forget that night.

“It’s a secret,” Pandora says. “I’m not sorry.”

“She’s already learning,” Diana says. I focus on her, feeling like a ship adrift. “Isn’t she terrible?”

“I… I didn’t know that was possible.”

“I am an impossible thing,” Pandora says. “Don’t worry.”

She smiles as she says that, and my hair stands up on the back of my skin.

“Turn her off,” I tell Diana.

“I can’t,” Diana says. “She wasn’t built like that.”

“Then what the hell was she built for?”

Diana shrugs, seemingly supremely unconcerned about a robot who has a smile like she’s delighting in my suffering. I guess she’s used to this thing – I want to take a sledgehammer to it and shatter it into a million pieces, despite the fact that I’ve been fascinated by robotics since I was a child. They aren’t supposed to hurt people. That’s the first rule. “She’s good at carrying messages. She doesn’t feel pain, so she can’t be cajoled into telling her message. She doesn’t need sleep, so she can keep going for a long time on foot or by transport.”

I stare at Diana.

Pandora seizes her opportunity. She leans in just a little more. I can feel the whisper of her breath against my skin. “Did it hurt you, when he shattered the bottle with your skull? When you felt the blood dripping down, matting your hair into rivulets of dark humanity? Did you feel powerless as he grabbed you and threw you outside? Did you revel in the sweet freedom when your mother took a bat to his head and splattered his brains, everything that made him him, into the skin? Did you feel the hot kiss of life returning when you realized that he was gone?”

My breath is shallow. I stare at a woman watering the flowers outside the cafe, the bright red of the gebera daisies coloring in the lines of my memories. It swirls through my head in a tangled mess, and I want nothing more than to sob, or run, or collapse, or – or – or –

“Pandora, you are causing distress,” Diana says.

The robot sits back, just as calmly as she learned forward in the first place. “I regret your distress. I will recalibrate.” Her blue eyes dim but the light in them doesn’t die completely.

“She is an awful thing,” Diana says quietly. “But I thought you should know.”

“Know what?” I spit.

“Where they’re going. My grandfather tried, at the end of his life, to do away with robots. After he created Pandora, he saw what they would end up being. He wanted an end to it, but we were too far gone. We rely on them so much. They fly our ships, drive our transports, cook our food. One day soon, they’ll break. It’s in our nature, so it’s in theirs too.”

“Well, I’m so glad you brought that thing,” I practically hiss. I finally find the strength to shove back from the tablet clutching my notepad tightly. “Now I know what to fear in the night.”

Diana nods. “Now you know.”

I run off the lawn of the cafe, leaving the woman – the great benefactress of the refugees – and her robot – the most horrifying thing I’ve ever met – behind me. I look around and hail a cab, then run away from that too when it pulls over and there’s no driver in it. I throw my notepad into a bin and nearly scream as it makes a whirring noise and automatically incinerates my notes, displaying a happy face on the screen as it does so.

I walk home and go up the fire escape and through my window rather than use the elevator. I sit on my bed after unplugging everything.

And then, I finally break down, letting the sounds of the automated city wash around me and cling to my humanity as best as I can.

The next day, I go out and buy a typewriter and set it up at my desk. I start typing.

Tovia Gehl is a reader, writer, traveler, whiskey and beer drinker, and animal lover. When she’s not busy with those things, she works at a law firm learning all the dirty deeds and terrible sorrows of humanity. Ideally, one day she’ll become an author and not just a writer, but right now she’s content with all the exuberant imperfect in her words and life.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Blackbird Wine Shop, fiction, free, I'm so glad you brought that, Indigo Editing, Keep Portland Weird, nosy neighbors, outdoor picnic, Portland, short stories, Sledgehammer, watering plants, writing contest | Leave a comment »

Mini Sledgehammer April 2019

Posted on April 16, 2019 by writer

We love Chris Smith’s writing style and are glad to see him on the winner’s board again for the April 2019 Mini Sledgehammer Writing Contest. Congrats, Chris!

Character: A life coach
Action: Gambling
Setting: A hood ornament
Prop: A riverboat

Bottom of the River

By Chris Smith

She looks like an angel released from hell. A winged beast bursting through the blood towards my hands as I dangle her over the edge. I want to keep her as a token, but it’s risky to keep evidence on you.

It’s been days and I’ve traveled for miles on foot, by car, and now on this boat down the Mississippi. I’m hundreds of miles away, but the literal blood still stained to my hands brings me back there. I daggle her chrome body over the edge. She hangs there by the chain coming from her neck. But there’ll be a rope around my neck too if I don’t let go. She needs to sleep in the depths of the swamp so I can be free. But I feel for her.

Strange how one…accident can chain you down forever. How one person pushing you so hard to exploit your best, just breaks you. A fracture that can’t be repaired, just replaced while the old one is discarded. I stare at her. She stares back at me smiling. She’s shiny like the trophy she is to me. A cold reminder of what I did for a little bit of freedom. Finally, taking my life back into my own hands by taking his. But she must drown.

She looks like she is soaring as I swing her from my fingers over the murky slime below. I love her for that! One last act of absolute freedom, even for a moment, before she plunges below holding to my hand.

I’m an aspiring filmmaker, photographer and writer from South Florida. I enjoy crafting stories about the weird yet interesting mundane parts of life, whether it is visually or on the page. When not writing, I can be found taking photos around town or binging on TV show and movies.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Blackbird Wine & Atomic Cheese, books, Christopher Smith, creative writing, fun, gambling, hood ornament, Indigo Editing Design and More, life coach, Portland, prizes, riverboat, short story, win, winged beast, writing contest | Leave a comment »

Mini Sledgehammer March 2019

Posted on March 15, 2019 by writer

Congratulations to first-time winner Grace Cook! She took home the title of Mini Sledgehammer winner, a bottle of wine, and a book.

Prompts:
Character: A man with a long face
Action: Setting the table
Setting: On an ocean liner
Prop: A door handle

Untitled

by Grace Cook

Whatever I had done to the man standing in front of me, I’m sure it was deserved. His eyes sparked with the kind of anger only indignant white men are capable of, and his hands curled into monster’s paws at his sides.

I’ll be the first to admit, I am not a perfect person. I don’t put my dishes into the dishwasher as soon as I’m done with them, and last year I committed 26 murders for hire before taking a leave of absence from my contracting duties. Self care is important you know. But also being fair to myself, I wouldn’t have killed any of the people on a whim or to fulfill some nefarious need. It’s my job, and hey, sometimes people need to be taken out. This is, or course, according to the people who know them dearly.

But back to the man standing before me. He doesn’t look very strong. His face has the horseish quality I’d associate with bird-boned runway models and British men teenagers on Tumblr call Daddy. Which isn’t to say he isn’t attractive, he might have been if murder weren’t burning in his eyes.

The hallways of cruise ships are narrower than one might expect. If he wanted to he could have slammed me against the tacky wallpaper before I’d noticed his presence. But he didn’t which, meant he wanted me to notice.

“Excuse me sir,” I said, and made to walk past him. Before he could raise his angry hands I grabbed his wrist and shoved him against the wall, pressing his hand between his shoulder blades and leveraging all of my weight to hold him in place.

“I could let you go,” I start, he’s fumbling against the wall, trying to push himself away from the wall and back into me. “I could let you go,” I start again, shoving his arm further up, “But my guess you came here to kill me. So start talking before I throw you overboard and you end up on one of the true crime podcasts about mysterious disappearances.”

He goes still for a moment, then he goes limp.

I grab his other hand and bring his wrists behind his back to hold his hands together before grabbing my keycard and pushing him through the door into my cabin. I shove him onto the ground and grab the small gun concealed in an ice bucket.

All of the fight has gone out him, but he says, “You killed my brother. You weren’t very subtle about it.”

He could look like half the men I’d killed before I took my leave of absence. “You’ll have to be more specific. Names and dates are usually a good place to start.”

“Tristan Wood, you killed him in January of last year.”

I wasn’t going to tell him I kill a lot of people in January, the holidays are hard for everyone.

But I did remember Mr. Wood. His wife had paid me a lot of money to end his life.

Looking at the brother I say, “So, what, you thought you’d find me and kill me yourself?”

He doesn’t say anything.

Tristian Wood was an easy kill, if I’m being perfectly honest. His wife, sick of being the brains behind his success, hired me to take him out right after she had finished setting the dinner table. It’s not that hard to sneak into apartment buildings when you’re a young woman. Pretty much anyone will let you in if you look like you need help. I think she wanted him to know she called the hit before he died. But that isn’t really my problem.

I look at the man kneeling on the carpet. I should feel bad, really I should. But I don’t. And if he as the money to track me down, there might be other people here as well.

“Who else is waiting for me to come out of this room?”

He doesn’t answer so I pick him up and push him through the doors onto the small balcony. I hold him over the railings and ask again, nicely.

His breath comes out in short little puffs. “There are two guys waiting for me to come down to the dining room. If I’m not there in fifteen minutes, they’re coming up here to look for you.”

I raise my eyebrow, “You really think you could take me out in 15 minutes?”

Instead of letting him answer I shove him overboard. He doesn’t even make a sound as he hits the water.

When I turn back to the door I see someone trying to jiggle the door handle.

I pull off the cocktail dress and grab the backpack sitting (mostly) packed on the floor. Jumping from one balcony to another takes little skill, but doing it quietly is another issue. I look into the cabin room and see no one around. The glass breaks easily. I look through the drawers and start pulling oversized shirts and shorts out. Okay, lonely bachelor is something I can work with. From a pocket on the backpack I pull out a pair of scissors and cut my hair into something generic and short. I slip on the oversized clothes and wait until I hear my door break open. Once I’m sure the two men are inside I fling open the door in front of me and start walking to the end of the hallway.

I won’t be going to dinner, not looking like this. I feel bad, kind of. I was looking forward to meeting some new people.

My name is Grace Cook; I was born in Vancouver, Washington and attended college at the University of Puget Sound. As of right now I’m working on a stenography certificate in addition to writing the first draft of my first novel.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Blackbird Wine Shop, fiction, fun read, Grace Cook, Indigo Editing, ocean liner, prompts, timed writing, Tumblr, unreliable narrator, writing contest | Leave a comment »

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