2006 CNW/FFWA Florida State Writing Competition

Earlier this year I entered the above named writing contest with several of my blogged stories. Today I found out that I received 2nd Honorable Mention for "The Map". Pretty coll. No money, but still nice. I entered in 2004 and received 7th Honorable Mention for "Cool City Limit", so I guess I'm getting better. :-) It's odd, really, since I felt that both stories were somewhat lacking...but I guess I was wrong. With two semi-wins under my belt I think it's time to start submitting to more competitions.

2006 CNW/FFWA Florida State Writing Competition
WINNERS - SHORT STORY - UNPUBLISHED
1st PLACE - Barbara Bitela, Roseville, CA - "War Dogs"
2nd PLACE - Jason Belbey, Vancouver, WA - "Three Seconds Daily"
3rd PLACE - Arlene J. Schreiber, Boca Raton, FL and Floral Park, NY - "A Home for Kayla"
1st HM - Gary R. Hoffman, Pensacola, FL - "The Purse"
2nd HM - W. David MacKenzie, Seattle, WA - "The Map"

For a full list of winners visit these links... 2006 ... 2004

Epilogue (634 words)

Here's the first fruit of your Galumphing Chart. The words selected at random were: Hummingbird, Sales Clerk, and Church. I turned it into an epilogue to the bomber story.


Epilogue
by W David MacKenzie

My wheelchair bumped and bounced across the cobblestones as Joshua pushed me through the crowded colonnade. The open-air temple teamed with worshipers intent on begging the attention of the Buddhist saints and sages tucked away in every alcove and altar of the ancient complex. Every supplicant carried a bundle of foot-long incense sticks to build bridges of smoke and spicy odors between heaven and earth, to carry their prayers and dreams to their chosen patrons. Aged grandmothers sought relief from arthritic pain or pleaded for an ailing grandchild. Harried businessman petitioned for favorable negotiations or safe travel. Newlywed couples asked for healthy sons and daughters to enrich their lives.

I wasn’t here today seeking blessings or boons; I’d come to offer thanks for a blessing already given, for a life spared against impossible odds, my life. A large basket of flowers sat in my lap; red-petalled daisies with butter-yellow centers, enormous pink and white lily blossoms with long green stamens tipped with yellow pollen, towering spikes of salmon shaded gladiolas, and fuchsia orchids shaped like the outstretched wings of dainty butterflies. I struggled to hold the mass of flowers as I bounced along.

Joshua slowed as we neared the shrine of the Sage of Healing and Medicine and he maneuvered the chair so that I was close to the offering table but not so close that I could just reach out and place the basket of flower on the shiny metal surface. He locked the chair’s brakes and then stepped back and waited. For everything the sage had done for me, for sending the stranger to warn us of the bomb in my ice cream parlor, for sparing me from the worst of the bomb’s blast, for speeding my recovery in the hospital, I had prepared two gifts of thanks. The flowers were just the traditional gift.

I tucked the flowers tightly in the crook of one arm and used the other to grip the chair as I slowly lifted my body from the seat. My legs and back flamed with pain but I fought it back. Muscles that had been battered and torn in the explosion and had not carried my weight for a month screamed now at the abuse I forced upon them. I willed each wounded tendon and ligament to move in concert with my battered muscles until I stood, trembling, before the Sage and his offering table. Relaxing my clenched jaw, I began to recite the Sage’s mantra. I shuffled my left foot forward, then my right, and then my left again. I offered up my strength of will to the Sage and, when I reached the table, I added the basket of flowers to my offering.

I stood there beside the table, eyes closed to help control the pain and reciting the Sage’s mantra over and over in low tones. The scent of the flowers filled my nostrils with delicate perfumes and a soft buzzing swelled and faded in my ears. Curious as to the cause of this sound I opened my eyes. The gladiolas stood only inches from my face, green stems studded with peach velvet blooms, and dancing among the flowers was an iridescent green and blue hummingbird. It hovered over a stalk of blossoms and probed each one in turn with swift plunges into the flower’s trumpet, a backwards drift, then more delicate probing.

When it had worked its way to the top most gladiola, the Sage’s messenger floated before my eyes, a living gem of feathers and ceaseless energy. It had tasted my offering, and acknowledged my gifts. My hands flew to my astonished face and tears of joy trickled down my cheeks. The messenger hovered a moment longer then flitted up into the wide blue sky and vanished, carrying my gratitude to the Sage.

Reckoning (768 words)

Reckoning
by W. David MacKenzie

At the touch of a button, the scene through the binoculars snapped into focus and glowing numbers displayed the distance and declination of the target and the degrees off north. Those precision readings didn’t concern me, however. I was far enough away to avoid injury, high enough to avoid detection, and had a perfect line of sight to enjoy the mayhem to come.

Through the lenses, a preschooler pressed his face against the glass partition as the ice cream artist behind the counter swirled the hand-blended mixture around on the chilled slab. With a wrist-twisting flourish that was almost too fast to see, she scooped the entire concoction onto her mixing blade and slid it into a chocolate-rimmed waffle cone. A dark suited man entered the shop as she handed the treat across the counter to the boy's.

Without removing my eyes from the binoculars, I reached one hand into my jacket and retrieved a cell phone. It was one of several that I had for this mission. I thumbed the 2 key then hovered over the SEND button. In the magnified display, I watched the suited man gaze at the mother and child for a moment then step forward to place his order. I pressed SEND and held the phone to my ear as the ring tone began.

The man fumbled briefly in his suit pocket before producing his own cell phone. He studied it briefly then stepped away from the counter toward the store’s front window as he brought the phone to his ear.

A click, then Rafe’s voice transported me back to that summer six years ago. We were all stumbling around like a bunch of drunks, hiding our nervousness behind laughter and lunacy before putting our lives on the path to true adulthood—before things spiraled out of control. A chasm of silence grew while my mind wandered then Rafe’s voice came again and returned me to the present.

“I said, this is Agent Duardo. Who are you?” I watched as Rafe raked his fingers through his thick black hair, a habit he’d displayed in times of stress for as long as I’d known him.

“To maintain set routines and predictable schedules,” I said into the cell phone, “is to become vulnerable.” The words were verbatim from the training manuals. “It’s one of the first rules we were taught in surveillance class at Quantico, Rafe. Routines put and agent, and those around an agent, in danger.”

Rafe’s eyes met mine across two city blocks and through the lenses of the digitally amplified binoculars.

“What do you want, Reiner?”

“So, we’re not on a first name basis, any more, then?”

Rafe threw back his own silence, this time.

“No, I guess it wouldn’t do to be close to one as dishonored as I.” Rafe was making this easier on me than I’d expected.

“Reiner…”

“I’m here to admonish you for visiting that ice cream shop every Thursday for the last month. Instructor Burke would be quite disappointed in his star pupil.”

“What?” Rafe’s features twisted in confusion. “Burke didn’t teach surveillance, he…”

I thumbed the END button. No, Burke taught explosives.

In the binocular’s display, Rafe threw down his phone and held out his arms to the twenty or thirty people in the ice cream parlor, his Bureau credentials in his right hand. In the blink of an eye the diners went from calm human beings to stampeding cattle rushing for the single exit. The doors flew open and screaming mothers, teens, and grandparents burst out into the sunny afternoon.

As Rafe pushed the counter girl across the shop toward the door, I set a wide-angle view on the binoculars. I touched the 3 key on my cell phone and pressed SEND.

The ice cream shop erupted in a searing wave of orange and yellow light that rocketed Rafe through the plate glass window. It left him smoldering and broken in the middle of the street while black smoke roiled from the destroyed shop and debris fluttered down like a ticker tape parade.

I let the binoculars hang from their strap around my neck and dropped the cell phone to the gravel roof on which I was standing. They’d eventually find the phone and trace it to a dead end. I took a planner from my pocket and thumbed it open to a photo of five youthful agents posed comically in front of the FBI Academy. I withdrew the pen from the planner’s spiral backbone and drew an X over Rafe’s young and smiling face then returned the planner to my pocket and walked away.

Reckoning (1099 words)

Reckoning
by W. David MacKenzie

At the touch of a button, the scene through the binoculars snapped into focus and glowing numbers displayed the distance and declination of the target and the degrees off north, but those precision readings didn’t concern the watcher. He was far enough away to avoid injury, high enough to avoid detection, and had a perfect line of sight to enjoy the mayhem to come.

* * *

The bell on the door bounced and dinged several times as he entered the ice cream parlor. His craving for butter pecan ice cream possessed him 24/7 but since he'd received his initial posting to Seattle he'd successfully limited his sweet tooth to a once-a-week indulgence. The shop was filled with people enjoying their own ice cream delights, but he was happy to see that there was only one other person ahead of him in line.

The preschooler pressed his face against the glass partition as the girl behind the counter used her mixing blade to fold caramel chips into the hand-blended ice cream on the chilled slab. With a wrist-twisting flourish that was almost too fast to see, she scooped the entire concoction onto her mixing blade and slid it into a chocolate-rimmed waffle cone. The youth giggled and clapped then reached as high as he could when the clerk handed the treat across the counter.

“Oh no you don't,” said the boy's mother as she rushed over. She intercepted the cone and held it out of his reach with one hand; in her other hand she gripped a wad of paper napkins. She used the tantalizing cone as bait to coax her son to the last free table in the shop and sat him down. Displaying the dexterity God only grants to trapeze artists and mothers of small children, she kept the cone out of the boy's grasp while she tucked several napkins under his shirt collar and draped more over his lap. Satisfied that she'd done as much as possible to minimize the impending dairy disaster, she handed the cone over to her son.

Was he ever that young, he wondered? Nope, not possible. His society mother would never have allowed that kind of unrestrained frivolity.

The clerk smiled brightly at him as he walked up to the counter. She was cute enough in her pink and white uniform but she was a little too perky for his tastes. He liked women a little more calm and restrained, a little more like—whoa, whoa, wait. He didn't just—no, that's sick. He scrunched up his face and shook off the thought. The girl looked confused at his expression and he thought she was about to ask if he was okay, when the phone in his jacket pocket chirped.

Reflexively, he extracted the phone and stepped out of line, moving toward a secluded spot near the front of the shop to take the call. The blue characters on the caller ID showed a familiar area code, 703, Northern Virginia, but the rest of the number didn't trigger any memories and there was no name shown so it wasn't someone on his extensive contacts list. The phone chirped again and he answered it.

“Agent Duardo speaking. Who's calling?”

No reply. Had the call been dropped? He pulled the phone from his ear and checked the display. No, he was still connected. Duardo returned the phone to his ear and listened carefully. The line was definitely open and he thought he detected the sound of wind blowing…and…a pigeon’s cooing? What was this, some kind of crazy wrong number from a pet store on the other side of the country?

“I repeat, who is this?”

“One of the first rules of surveillance we were taught at Quantico, Agent Duardo,” a male voice said in his ear, “was to avoid habits of time or place or route.”

Quantico? That explained the area code. Was this something to do with his training at the FBI academy? Was it an internal affairs snap inspection?

“To maintain set routines, predictable schedules, is to become vulnerable. It is to put oneself at risk.” The voice paused then continued with a weightier inflection. “Rafe, it puts those around the agent in danger.”

The caller knew his nickname. He was someone close to Duardo but who? Duardo’s heart sank in his chest as he absorbed the full scope of the caller’s words. Duardo spun around to take in the shop and the twenty or thirty people seated around him. Teens, grandparents, mothers, babies, all in danger because a psycho was stalking him. He raked his fingers through his hair and forced his breathing to slow down.

“Who are you and what do you want?” he said.

“It is necessary to discipline you for visiting this ice cream shop every Thursday for the last month. Instructor Burke would be quite disappointed in your performance.” The call ended.

Burke? Burke wasn’t the surveillance instructor, he was… Oh, God. Burke lectured on terrorist explosives.

“May I have your attention, please.” Agent Duardo’s voice came out deeper than he’d expected but it carried easily in the enclosed shop and made him sound more confident than he was. Seattle was his first posting outside of Washington DC and it was looking like it might be his last. The chatter of the crowd died down quickly. “I am Agent Rafael Duardo with the FBI.” He flipped open his ID badge and held it out. The customers looked at one another and concern showed on their faces. “I have reason to believe that there is a bomb in this establishment. Please exit quickly and…” Screams and wails and crashing furniture swallowed the rest of his words, as thirty diners became a human stampede seeking the single door to safety.

The counter girl was the last one out the door. Duardo was close behind her when the air around him boiled away and a searing wave of orange and yellow light rocketed him through the plate glass window. It left him smoldering and broken in the middle of the street while smoke roiled from the destroyed shop and debris fluttered down to cover an entire city block.

* * *

The watcher lowered the binoculars and smiled. He slid his cell phone into a coat pocket then retrieved a planner from an inside pocket and opened it. A photo of five youthful agents posed comically in front of the FBI Academy was clipped to one page. He drew an X over the face of a swarthy skinned young man then returned the planner to his pocket and walked away.

My Creative Piece

The end goal of the writing class it to produce a 500 word creative piece that shows we've learned the lessons on form, style, and technique. This is my creative piece. It'll need some editing, I'm sure, but I wanted to run it by my familial critics first. Yes, it's my usual blend of death and destruction. :-) Let me know what you think and what needs to be changed.

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Reckoning

At the touch of a button, the scene through the binoculars snapped into focus and glowing numbers displayed the distance to the target and the degrees off north, but those precision readings didn’t concern him. He was far enough away to avoid injury and close enough to enjoy the mayhem to come.

A preschooler pressed his face against the glass partition as the ice cream artist behind the counter swirled the hand-blended ice cream mixture around on the chilled slab. With a wrist-twisting flourish that was almost too fast to see, she scooped the entire concoction onto her mixing blade and slid it into a chocolate-rimmed waffle cone. She handed the treat across the counter to the boy's mother and the woman led the boy out of the shop and out of his field of vision.

The watcher reached one hand into his jacket and retrieved a cell phone. He thumbed the 2 key then hovered this thumb over the SEND button. Through the binoculars, a dark suited man stepped up to the counter and started to place his order. The watcher pressed SEND and held the phone to his ear as the ring tone began.

In the shop, the man held up his hand to interrupt the girl and fumbled briefly in his suit pocket before producing his own cell phone. He studied it briefly then stepped out of line and moved toward the store’s front window as he brought the phone to his ear.

A click, then a voice in the watcher’s ear. "Agent Hawkins speaking, who is this?” The watcher said nothing and within three heartbeats he had control of the conversation. “I repeat, who are you?”

“The first rule we were taught at Quantico, Agent Hawkins, was to avoid routines.” The watcher’s voice was calm, monotone. “To maintain set routines, predictable schedules, was to become vulnerable.” The operative watched through the binoculars as Hawkins raked his fingers through his hair.

“What do you want?”

“To admonish you for visiting that ice cream shop every Thursday for the last month. Instructor Burke would be quite disappointed in his star pupil.” The watcher pressed the END button.

In the magnified display, Hawkins threw down his phone and began gesticulating at the other patrons in the shop. The doors flew open and he pushed screaming mothers, teens, and grandparents out into the sunny afternoon.

As the sounds of the fleeing crowd reached the watcher on the rooftop a block away, he lowered the binoculars and enjoyed the unassisted view. He thumbed the 3 key on the cell phone, and pressed SEND.

The ice cream shop erupted in waves of fire, smoke, and thunder.

The watcher smiled, then took a planner from his pocket and opened it. A photo of five youthful agents posed comically in front of the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia was clipped to one page. He drew an X over the face of one of the agents in training then returned the planner to his pocket and walked away.

Choosing Powerful Words

For this assignment we were to re-write the sentences to make them powerful, vivid, and unique without becoming cliche, melodramatic, or overwritten. My before and afters are below.


BEFORE: There were so many winding curves as I drove in the blazingly bright orange sunlit glare of the everlasting road that I was utterly exhausted by the endless ordeal and thought I might faint if given half the chance.

AFTER: The road snaked endlessly through the sun-tortured badlands.

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BEFORE: The leaves were red.

AFTER: Crimson and scarlet and burgundy splashed across the late summer mountainside.

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BEFORE: That horrible tornado was like a raging bull charging a red cape so it could blast everything we owned to smithereens once and for all.

AFTER: Mechanical, inevitable, and somehow sentient, the tornado bore down on our farm as we raced for the storm cellar.

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BEFORE: John thought Jane was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and he knew he would love her forever.

AFTER: Their eyes met for a moment as they scanned the crowded room from opposite corners, then her glance moved on. In that heartbeat John’s life changed forever.

Candle (142 words)

The harsh white glare of lightning and a cannonade of thunder pierced my senses simultaneously then, a heartbeat later, darkness and utter silence swallowed my home. This actually happened with some regularity in my neighborhood so, after the initial Oh-My-God moment, my hands deftly sought out the lighter and small jar candle on my desk. A click, a flash, a brief pause as the butane-fed flame kissed the candle’s wick, then near darkness again. The newborn fire struggled, surged, receded, then confidently enveloped the blackened stub of string and grew to a tall flickering tongue of flame that pushed back the invading darkness and restored rudimentary caveman technology to my writing desk. The gentle summertime aroma of lavenders flowed from the candle’s illumination but did nothing to muffle the oppressive silence that filled the house. Now, where did I put that iPod?

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Story Copyright 2006 by W. David MacKenzie

Bus Stop (183 words)

Martha stared, unblinking, unbelieving, as John stepped slowly off the bus and faced her, hands thrust into his coat pockets and feet planted firmly in the ice-cold slush at the side of the road; a Mexican standoff in an arctic wasteland. Damn this blizzard and damn the frozen starter motor that forced her to leave her car at home and trek through the snow to this particular bus stop at this particular time. John’s pig-headed immobility caused the other riders to slowly twist and snake their way around him as they exited and compelled Martha to stand face-to-face with her abusive ex-husband that much longer. It seemed to Martha that the moment would never end but, with a tremendous effort of will, she pulled her eyes away from John’s and pushed past him onto the bus. John didn’t look back as the bus lurched away from the curb and soon his shape was lost in the blowing snow, but Martha knew John wouldn’t just disappear—she’d have to move again and this time it would have to be farther than just across town.

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Story Copyright 2006 by W. David MacKenzie

Beachcombing (229 words)

Beachcombing
by W. David MacKenzie

With the careful steps of old age, Eunice eased her stooped body over the grassy dune and out onto the windswept Bodie Island beach. Salt spray and grains of sand pelted her weathered face and the stiff Atlantic breeze caught at her wicker basket as if it were a parachute and tried to rip it from the crook of her arm, but she turned her body side-on to the gusts and trudged on. When Eunice reached the edge of the beach, where the waves crashed upon the shore and chased sandpipers with foamy tendrils of seawater, she kicked off her sandals and walked barefoot in the cool surging surf. Years seemed to melt away from her as she strolled along the beach, bending down now and then to pick up a small piece of driftwood or a particularly pretty shell. Eunice placed each nature-made trinket into her basket and made a mental note of just where she’d place it in her rockery or herb garden to add the perfect accent to her amateur agricultural efforts. After years of twice-a-week walks on this beach Eunice thought she’d seen just about everything the sea could toss ashore, but when her fingers closed on the small hard disk and she thumbed away the salt and sand to reveal the stamped face of an ancient golden coin, she knew she’d found something unique.

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Story Copyright 2006 by W. David MacKenzie

Insurance (676 words)

Insurance
by W. David MacKenzie

Presidente Santos International Airport in Cahama, Angola was a joke. One grass runway, one tiny building, one mechanic/porter, and one customs officer. The only thing that made it “International” was the charter-only crop duster that shuttled back and forth from Namibia for oil and diamond execs to inspect their wells and mines. That’s why I chose it, easy in and easy out.

“Você tem qualquer coisa declarar?” asked the solitary uniformed customs officer in bored Portuguese as he finished flipping through my passport.

“I have nothing to declare,” I said flatly in English. I met his gaze and held it. Red surrounded the nearly-yellow white of his eyes, like someone had colored them in with a crayon and a dried up highlighter pen. He blinked and unzipped my suitcase.

“Eu não tenho nada declarar.” I repeated. His dark face looked up at me. That got his attention, all right. He didn’t expect me to speak Portuguese. I placed a hundred kwanza note on top of my luggage. His next move would either be to close the zipper and stamp my passport or proceed with the inspection. These rural inspectors were hard to figure out. Sometimes they’d be needy enough to take the bribe and other times they’d flex all the righteous bureaucracy they had at their disposal. The inspector opened my luggage and the note fluttered to the floor.

So be it.

With carefully practiced carelessness my toiletries were dumped on the floor, shattering a vial of cologne and improving the aroma of the customs shack and my polo shirts were piled onto the open inkpad next to the inspector’s passport stamp. He rummaged through all of the clothes in the suitcase and finally came up holding my conservative, yet still nicely tailored, business suit like he was strangling a chicken for dinner. Those wrinkles were never going to come out, but I just stood there, unmoving and without expression as he thrust a hand into each of the pockets looking for some bit of contraband he could use as an excuse to arrest me. He found it.

“Ayyyy!” he screamed and yanked his hand from the left inner pocket. He dropped the coat on top of the open suitcase in surprise then he dropped to the floor himself, writhing in agony as the venom-induced pain moved up his arm. I leaned over the inspection table and looked at the man as spasms began to wrack his body. Soon he’d be frothing at the mouth, then paralysis and death by cardiac arrest. It was a bad way to die.

I gingerly grabbed the side of the suitcase and flipped all of the remaining contents onto the convulsing inspector then snapped the apparently empty case closed and set it on the floor beside me. A small movement caught my eye as my “insurance policy”, the delicate death stalker scorpion, climbed to the top of the pile of clothes, assumed the classic pinchers-out tail-up pose, and proclaimed itself king of the laundry.

As the customs inspector quieted and neared death, I brushed aside the ink-stained polo shirts and used his stamp to validate my passport. I picked up the suitcase and the disassembled sniper rifle secreted in the false bottom, walked confidently out to the porter who was chatting with the pilot of the idling plane, and handed him my documents. He found the Angola stamp and returned my passport then helped me aboard the small aircraft, handed my luggage in after me, and closed the door.

The pilot and the porter traded thumbs up signs then the engine raced and we were on our way. I looked at my watch. I’d made good time at Presidente Santos International Airport and I was right on schedule to meet with my target. The death of the customs inspector might make my exit a little tricky but maybe the porter would find the hundred kwanza note and consider himself well paid to chalk it up as an accident. No matter, really, it was a sunny day and I had backup plans aplenty.

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Story Copyright 2006 by W. David MacKenzie