free | Sledgehammer Writing Contest

Mini Sledgehammer November 2015

Posted on November 16, 2015 by writer

Edward Gutiérrez took home the prizes this month. Congratulations!

The prompts were:
Character: Your high school sweetheart
Action: Removing a hang nail
Setting: Sonora, Mexico
Prop: A hot dog

My Little Fat Boy

The bell rings. It’s the end of second period. The teacher left the edward pic classroom door open for all the kids to walk out single file. The lunchroom isn’t far. I can see Andre through the window that faces out to the street. He’s speed walking toward the lunch line and all the other kids are two steps behind.

Andre loves to eat. just like his dad. I remember when I was his age, I would steal all the other kids’ lunch tickets on pig-in-a-blanket day. My nickname wasn’t El Gordo (the fat man) for nothing. Now Andre is walking the same halls that I did. Anyway I digress. Today I’m here to volunteer at my little fat boy’s school. I need to make up for the all chocolate bars we ate that we were supposed to sell for the school’s annual fundraiser. To be fair we only ate about half, we gave away a bunch to Andre’s cousins.

I’m making my way out of the school office and down the stairs over to the lunchroom. I look and Dre, short for Andre, is putting mustard and ketchup meticulously on his hot dog bun. As I walk closer I can see he has managed to put two weenies on his bun. How’d he get the second one? I think to myself and smile. That’s my boy! just like his papi. When he notices me Dre puts down his ketchup packets, steps off the cafeteria table, runs up and hugs me. What a feeling. “Go eat” I say, “Dre remember, 40 chews for each mouthful” … Yea right.

The joy in my heart quickly fades as I see the assistant principal, Mrs. Vasquez. I know her when she was just Vicky. We go way back, from middle school all the way to high school. We were sweethearts back then. “Come with me” she says. I gesture to Andre and walk up the stairs behind Mrs.Vasquez. We walk in her office. She grabs a hammer, gloves, and a plunger. “Your first task, unclog the boy’s bathroom.” “Thanks” I tell her as I reach for the hammer “no no” she says, “i’ll need this for later.” I think to my puzzled self, WTF? – for later? what’s that supposed to mean? She can’t still be pissed about prom night.

Ten minutes later i’m changing my socks in the maintenance closet. The boys bathroom was tougher than I thought and I’m a mess. I hear footsteps outside the door. Then I hear two knocks and the deadbolt locks. Suddenly I hear in Spanish, “Puto! Eres un Puto! Muerete!” (Whore! you’re a male whore! die!). Aw shit. Prom night, she’s still pissed.

I go for the door and it’s locked. No windows, no crawl spaces anywhere. I gotta open the door. No sense on banging on it, shoot, i’m in the school basement. I reach for the toolbox and think, if I can just pry the door hinges off with the…, damn that witch, no hammer! I look around and see a set of keys behind the furnace. It’s too hot. If I can just shut it off and reach for the keys. I just need the valve key. I look 10 feet up and see a gas valve key on a hangnail pinned to the wall. Shit, no hammer! That’s the last Mexican girl from Sonora I’ll ever cheat on.

***

Dedicated to the memory of my friend Bryan Tinti.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers, Uncategorized | Tagged: Edward Gutierrez, free, Mexico, Portland, prizes, Sledgehammer, writing contest | Leave a comment »

Mini Sledgehammer October 2015

Posted on October 15, 2015 by writer

This month’s Mini Sledgehammer marked a slight changing of the guards. John and Daniel have been leading this fun monthly contest for over a year, and this was John’s last month. Thanks for all you’ve done for us, John! And thanks for continuing to lead us, Daniel!

Ashley Michael Karitis was our very deserving winner this month. Read on for her fantastic story. Congratulations, Ashley!

Prompts:

Character: Custodian

Action: Presidential Debate

Setting: Wedding

Phrase: “Why didn’t you tell me?”

***

The Abridged Memoirs of a Custodian

by Ashley Michael Karitis

Clyde was, in what might be considered, the loneliest of professions.

Each afternoon, he would arrive at the empty aisles of St. Jean’s Parish to tend to the multitude of custodial sins: cobwebs in the gothic arches, splatters on the stained glass (portraying the station of the cross), picking out lint in the oak and maple pews, and vacuuming the animal cracker crumbs left over from the little ones whose parents tried keeping them occupied with said simple carbohydrates.

Lonely these days may have seemed, but lonely, he was not. Clyde was privy to moments that were important enough to call on those far and wide—friends and family, and even those who would need to forgive each other in order to come together for such special gathering.

In his thirty-seven years as a custodian, Clyde had attended more weddings, funerals, christenings, and masses than all of the priests combined who had rotated in and out over the years.

Special, these moments and gatherings were, but Clyde was still not part of them. He was only an observer, sometimes unwelcome, on the fray, and always behind the scenes. Nobody really wanted to see a spotted-faced, balding man in coveralls on their wedding day. Yet, he was the unseen enabler, for one flick of a switch and the christening of Patrick Joseph or The March of the Brides would come to a crashing halt.

Clyde could recount every type of wedding you could possibly have under the roof of God’s House: painfully planned nuptials to ensure family legacies; unions to provide for an unexpected baby bump; marriages that had taken place during custodial hours, out of sight of forbidding parents. He had seen groom and bride spat with each other as though they were in a presidential debate, sometimes ending with a slap in the face and a “Why didn’t you tell me!?” Never assuming, Clyde dutifully clean up the flower petals, rice, and extra paper programs.

Usually, the tense, happy, or excited couples would return to the parish with a new babe to be doused with holy water, draped in a stale lacey gown. Clyde would set up the bath and rearrange the potted seasonal flowers—just so the mothers would feel extra special—and afterward he would mop up the excess drops of bath water that speckled the altar.

Through all these celebrations, Clyde never feared, avoided, or felt sad about the funerals that came and went every week. How could a funeral be any less important than a wedding or christening? How could he feel sad for the dead, and for those that came to celebrate and memorialize their person’s life?

For Clyde, being a custodian had been his own ritual, just as these events in St. Jean’s had been rituals. It was a ritual of living vicariously, and letting the joys and sorrows of others brim over into his world.

***

Ashley was raised in Bend, OR. She is a documentary filmmaker based in Portland, OR that dabbles in travel writing. She is currently working on her first compilation of short stories.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers, Uncategorized | Tagged: Ashley Michael Karitis, Custodian, free, Portland, Presidential debate, prizes, Sledgehammer, writing contest | Leave a comment »

Mini Sledgehammer April 2015

Posted on April 20, 2015 by writer

Julia Himmelstein is back with another amazing story!

***

Character: The cowgirl
Action: Watching British television
Setting: the factory
Prop: A milk jug

***

Untitled

by Julia Himmelstein

It had been a while since the cowgirl had been around. He had been watching for her, shyly, spending lapses of evenings by the kitchen sink, washing the same four dishes, while peering out the window. It wasn’t really her looks that got to him, just the fact that she was so incredibly out of place. The first time, he had wondered if this was a mistaken Halloween costume, a drunken party guest in the wrong part of town. Their eyes had met as he sat on his front stoop, tongue-tied. The fringes on her leather vest rustled in the light breeze, and she made a funny clicking noise with her boots, as though commanding an invisible horse. Long after she was gone, he thought he could hear the click-clack of her boots on the pavement.

They saw each other every few nights after that, she always wearing gingham and leather, and he always staring, dumbfounded. “Just say something to her, man,” he muttered to himself, channeling one of his high school buddies that surely would have had the balls to talk to her, and probably say something incredibly rude. But those friends were long gone, off to work in the factories that made pointless gadgets for white folks. It was just him now, him and his four dishes and the cat Theo. He couldn’t remember the last time he had talked to a human, let alone see one in real life. He used to have video chats with his sister, but that was before the internet cut out. Now when he wanted to see people he popped in one of the British Television discs that he had found in a closet when he first moved in.

He found himself dreaming about her at night. In his dreams, she was close enough that he could see her freckles, and smell her breath. It smelled funny, like something old. Sometimes she would even smile.

He hadn’t always been such a loner. He too, had tried the factory life, first for a manufacturer of milk jugs and then for a tech company. He grew listless and bored, and had enough near misses with large machinery that he was let go. With a sigh, he moved to the empty country, finding an abandoned trailer on a field to call home.

The cowgirl usually walked past around dusk. There was something about the way she looked, like a hungry child, that made him feel protective and tentative at the same time. She always went the same direction, and always looked at him, brief and hard, before leaving.

He started to worry when he hadn’t seen her in a week. He wondered if she had met someone that actually spoke to her. Maybe she even found a horse. Did she have a home, or a family? What did her voice sound like?

He awoke late one night to hear the click-clack of her boots. As if in a dream, he walked through the dark trailer and stepped outside into the moonlight, knowing she would be there. She stared at him with her usual look. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.

***

Julia Himmelstein lives in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches, smiles, listens, and wonders. She delights in hugs from friends, children’s smiles, and fresh baked cookies (or any food, really).

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Blackbird Wine, fiction, free, Julia Himmelstein, Mini Sledgehammer, Portland, prizes, writing contest | Leave a comment »

Mini Sledgehammer October 2014: “Uncles and Buicks”

Posted on October 20, 2014 by writer

Thank you to Daniel and John, who continue to host the Portland Mini Sledgehammers at Blackbird Wine. This month’s winner was Kris Lovesey–congratulations!

Prompts:
Character: The recently departed
Action: Riding Bikes
Setting: By the train tracks
Prop: Pillow case

***

Uncles and Buicks

By Kris Lovesey

Biking across Jacksonville is a great excuse to look like shit. Shirt starched with sweat. I look like shit- I smell like a rainbow of balls feet, farts and pits—And I feel great.

If I rode in the beautifully temp. regulated car with my parents I would smell like coffee and stress but I would much rather smell like shit- and acrid eye burning garlic asparagus piss.

It suits me. It’s my cologne. My toilet water. Drier sheets- moth balls.

My uncle was a weird one. I remember snippets of him laced through my childhood. He was/is much older than my dad. He joined the Airforce- got out and flew for Arab families who bought him Rolexes. He had scattered divorces and kids who don’t speak with the rest of the family.

I remember the gun in his bedside table drawer in Sarasota. In St. Augustine we visited him in a house trailer. My brother and I were coaxed outside to collect pine cones. We were promised a quarter each.

My aunt told me, she was drunk on vodka, he would drown cat babies instead of spaying them.
We were on our way to Sam’s Club. She pointed to a railway bridge and said he would take the whole litter stuffed in a Goodwill Pillow case- a couple of zip ties, a brick and- out the Buick window.

Our family moved around and these sporadic encounters with family formed all my impressions of the South.

I arrive at church late. The preacher is going on and on about: Our Recently Departed.

My uncle Bobby. They guy lived more in my dreams than in my life… but he’s family and that’s how my family functions.

-seperate
-Christmas Cards
-Birthday Phone Calls
-The Thanks Giving tradition of fruit cake making- that only lasted for three years.

I was so proud of myself for knowing pine cones were not in fact alligator eggs. But Hey-
What the fuck did a California boy know about alligators.
They live in Florida- it takes a 45 shot in a quarter sized spot behind their skull to kill one.
You have to pick up their eggs and burn them before they hatch.
You have to kill the kittens.

We are in the dirty South.
This is where I’m from.

This is what I keep on leaving behind me like a dead uncle Bobby.

***

Born to a father from South Carolina and a mother from a dairy farm in England. Growing up around the nicest people and being spoiled on the world’s best chocolates and sweets did as much for Kris’s deep optimism as growing up in divided Germany helped to form a quirky outlook on life. Kris’s story begins as an American Air force brat surrounded by giant military trucks and transporters, fleets of F-16s and other jets, and the calm German village.

After moving around a lot and finishing an arts degree at Bowling Green State University Kris continued moving with stays in: New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, as well as Southern California, Florida, and the Pacific North West. Portland is where this author currently resides while writing fiction and non-fiction. Kris floats between cultures, countries, and scattered friends and family- seemingly sucking nectar to feed and indulge the curiosity driving this boheme-cosmopolitan.

Lightheartedness is seen in everything Kris. The fictional stories weave our world with colorful threads- beautiful and crass. Narratives drag us all the places one never knows to look for on a map or in our imaginations. The characters will remind you of fantastic qualities of man which surround us. Non-fiction works by Kris are brash “how to” get what you want out of life guides. These deal with traveling and living abroad and the advantages and hurdles. The life experiences salt and pepper and offer a new pair of glasses to view the world.

Kris draws literary inspiration from the wonderful worlds of Roald Dahl and Haruki Murakami, and peacefulness/spiritual tones of Hermann Hesse and Patrick Suskind. This makes a down to earth and honest author who is a pleasure to read. Pick up Kris’s books right now and meet the characters and real life people to lighten up your day.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Blackbird Wine, Buick, free, Kris Lovesey, prizes, Sledgehammer, uncles, writing contest | Leave a comment »

Mini Sledgehammer September 2014: “The Vacation of a Lifetime”

Posted on October 7, 2014 by writer

Thanks to everyone who came out for 36 minutes of writing competition in September! Congratulations to winner Kent Nightingale.

Prompts
Character: An imposter
Action: The moon
Setting: Starting over
Phrase: “Don’t tell me…”

***

The Vacation of a Lifetime

by Kent Nightingale

“Don’t ever tell me this wasn’t exciting enough for you, Dale.”

“Okay, Chuck, I’ll try to keep that in mind. Honestly I thought there would be more mountains and caves in this place. It’s kind of like Kansas.”

“Well shit, I don’t know what to tell you. Next time we’ll buy tickets to Jupiter. I hear the weather there keeps one guessing.”

Flights to the general public had gone on sale in 2024, but it was another ten years before Chuck could afford two tickets to the moon, wealthy as he was. He was a practical guy in that sense. Always shopping for a bargain. He’d have bought a one-way ticket if it were more cost effective. Funny thing is, even in a far out place like the Earth’s only natural satellite, a tourist is a tourist. They began their days swimming in the hotel pool, gazing out the impressive walls of glass into the blackness of space.

After breakfast, a menu of UFO cakes and Marshan juice, they waited in the terminal for their daily tour. A vehicle not so different than a minivan, with enormous treaded tires, set forth on highway L62. Traffic was a bit thick getting out of Portland, the moon’s largest city, but once they got on the open road, the perspective was impressive indeed.

“You know,” said Chuck, “for years I’ve had the notion that I’ve wanted the chance to start over. I really feel this trip might be a turning point for me, now that my divorce is over with.”

“It is” Dale replied. “It really is.” This meant a great deal to Chuck, as there were few people on Earth, or elsewhere for that matter, that knew him as well as Dale.

Though English was the official language of the moon, few of the service staff were fluent, so the men reached for their headsets, to receive the audio portion of their tour.

“Ahead you will see King’s Crater, a place any man could call home. Inside it’s underground bunker are all the essentials a human requires to live in health and harmony. Most individuals find themselves well-adjusted within a month.”

Chuck removed his headphones and grabbed Dale by the arm. Inside his heart an alarm was sounding.

“I would have told you if I could,” Dale whispered. “I couldn’t come to live here by myself, with not a friend in the world.”

Chuck only stared ahead, his face devoid of any expression.

***

Kent is a musician, songwriter, and outdoor enthusiast from Portland, Oregon.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: 36 minutes, Blackbird Wine, free, kent nightingale, prizes, vacation, writing contest | Leave a comment »

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