There is a short story competition on NPR on the weekends, whenever they don’t have reruns of Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me…, and This American Life to play. The story must be under 600 words, so it can be read in about three minutes, and an author, who also picks the final story, makes up the other rules for each competition. For instance, this time around, each story must have a character enter town, and one leave town. The judge is Daniele Evans, author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, a critically acclaimed short story collection, I’m afraid I’ve never heard of.
The current competition closes on the 25th at 11:59, much like every high school paper I’ve ever had. I have only competed once, and found that I am much too verbose to compose a 600 (then 500) word story. After all, being wordy is much easier than being note-worthy. But I did actually write and submit one, though it was 521 words, and so disqualified automatically, and I felt far too lazy to try and tinker with it. When I tried my hand it, the judge was Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, and his guidelines were the story must begin with the line “Some people swore that the house was haunted” and end with the line “Nothing was ever the same again, after that”.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about trying it again, and to dissuade myself, I figure I should post my first story, mostly unedited, to show what a horrible mistake that would be.
And the chorus said…
Some people swore that the house was haunted. They were the same “some people” who spread word when the Jennings girl had first begun to show; they were the Greek chorus of the neighborhood and their word was likened to that of God on the five cul-de-sacs off of Lamar Drive.
To Emer, though, they were sellers of snake oil, to be tarred, feathered, and driven out post-haste. She would see them on their driveways or their neighbor’s driveways admiring the house or the garden, while their husbands divvied out advise on lawn care and car maintenance to one another, and amidst the banality of it all, their eyes would sparkle.
Emer would watch, seated from the curb, her braided hair kissing the top of the grass as she slowly panned from house to house, looking for the omnipresent “they”, spending whole days on the curb in front of her house, or slowly staring down each unblinking facade. Her glasses would often slide down her nose, and she’d have to right them, flinching as at the “cuteness” of the gesture.
She would make her daily rounds, returning home with the malicious grin of a saboteur.
Her mother worried about this with the father, when he arrived home. Emer was always careful to have hurried home before him, so she was parked in front of the TV for when he came through the door, his head bent in the position of supplication.
“Is this right for a girl? To be so…obsessive?” And the father could barely manage a series of non-committal comments.
At dinner he would have a highball ready, with lemon slices and tonic water forgotten on the counter, but the gin was right at his fingertips through out the night, even when Emer would sneak down much later and find him now glued to the TV. The father would never notice her and sometimes she’d watch him for hours.
The one thing “they” said that she believed was about the house. As she walked home, she would pass it, seeing the green chain link sprouting rust, the lawn a prairie in stately suburbia.
Opinion on the playground was certainly decisive on it; the various pre-cliques all in firm agreement for once. No one would walk by the house at night or god forbid Halloween; even the older children avoided it.
Emer was no stranger to fear of the house, but she was always curious. So, on a day after she had seen her father drinking late into the night, she made a detour on the walk home and marched up its walkway.
She opened the door and gazed inside, looking at the emptiness of the house. Entering, Emer wondered from room to room, the light gasping in through dust-encrusted windows illuminating just enough to restrict her fear to white noise. In the upstairs, in the smallest room, she sat down and looked at the walls.
“Hello?”
Nothing answered her.
It was just an abandoned house. The owners just hadn’t managed a sale, and had just given up on the place. Animals, domestic and wild, occasionally dropped in. High school-ers visited, doing those things the chorus disapproved of in their capital D way.
There was no haunting here. Exit Emer, in disappointment.
Back home, she hung her coat, and entered the den. He mother was cooking super in the kitchen. Emer looked at the father’s recliner and felt shiver, the type she’d expected to feel when inside the abandoned house. There been more harmony there than in any of the father’s smiles.
Nothing was ever the same again after that.
For those interested, I would suggest they read some of the better entries posted here: http://www.npr.org/2011/09/10/140353661/three-minute-fiction-round-7-arriving-and-leaving
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