PUSH OR PULL - lauren becker - $200 cash prize winner

(WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER, as selected by Sean Lovelace)

The Alley wasn't where it should have been, where he told me it would be. I was about to head back to my car when I saw a small huddle of guys smoking cigarettes in front of a wooden door, the faintest hint of neon behind them.

push

One of them asked "You here for Scotty?" They all laughed. they wanted to see weakness and Scotty was the only one who could embarrass me like that. I told them yes and asked if he was there.

pull

The apparent ringleader gave a head nod toward the door. Its sole accessory a deteriorated metal sign that read PU, then scratches. PU(LL) or PU(SH). I wanted to pull. I pushed. then pulled. The bar was so dark I could taste the beer, smell the old carpet, the drugstore perfume, the built-up stench of ancient restrooms.

push

I heard the guys laughing behind me again. I was only one more who came when Scotty said come. This man set my instincts right or made my instinct against my instincts wrong. He was a Romani carnie scam artist with long, thick dark hair, a large nose, and nearly black eyes. He was my agonizing fantasy. I was angry and enthralled with this man who caused me to cross my legs and squeeze my thighs hard so he wouldn't see my mouth open slightly and eyes blink slowly if I shifted in my seat.

pull

I waited for him to find me. When my eyes adjusted I saw him. He sat on a stool, talking to the bartender. Looking at me. Still talking, he motioned for me to come to him.

THE PARTICULARS - m. bartley seigel

(Barry Graham's selection had he been the judge)

She plays her lungs at children and dogs. Like a recorded muezzin. Like a fall from wedlock, or from grace, or from a third floor window. An omen in a bun. A bonnet in the oven. She is a woman beloved and tremedously abstract. She is armed. With a Bible. With bile. Like a gaggle of girls telling lies. Hers are sticks and stones over before begun. A tongue unsafe singing songs unsung and dissembling. She is a bare bulb burning raw light into the eyes of everything willed. She is a great machine, a redoubt against love porous and perfunctory. She is peopled with ghost fires speaking through voice pipes, her thinking a feeling fractured. Her muchness miserable.

STOP DON'T STOP - bill barr

(Elizabeth Ellen's selection had she been the judge)

stop

My head's split right down the middle to my lower palate. The greasy green monkey sprang onto her shoulder, manipulated her pulling strings. Her jaw bounced up and down, tongue flapped on the staccato s-stops.

stop

"You should just stop. I don't like your stupid staring. Say something."

stop

She'd fallen accustomed to my small creatures leaping about. This was the first one to perch on her shoulder. I'd known it would happen eventually. The chartreuse primate jumped to me and picked loose brain matter, flicking it at her off the end of his long, bony digits. Monkey stood and wrapped the strings up to the control bar around my tongue then leaped back to her. He waggled his hips until the slimy bright green and yellow end of his pecker protruded from the foreskin, wrapped his arms around the right half of her head and entered her ear, penis slid in and out of view through her eye socket.

stop

Her right eye rolled back then gazed out again and again, in rhythm with his thrusts.

stop

"I don't like your mother either but take it so personally when I agree with you?" Monkey shuddered, disappearing into her ear in reverse orgasm.

.22 CALIBER OEDIPUS - kip knott

(Peter Schwartz's selection had he been the judge)

22

Before I knew women, I knew where father hid the gun.

22

While he and Mother weeded the garden on Sunday, I climbed the hamper in their closet to reach the attic where he stored the .22. Asbestos insulation pricked my skin and cobwebs silvered my hair. Brass cartridges warmed in my hands.

22

I imagined what it must be like to kill a bird or a squirrel or maybe, even, a racoon at point-blank range. I imagined what blood looked like pouring from a single, perfect hole.

22

Every November I asked Father to take me hunting. Every November Mother locked me in a cage of musical notes with my violin until at last I surrendered to bach and Vivaldi.

22

I aimed the barrel at Mother's portrait hanging from a rafter. I held the rifle butt to my cheek like a violin. I lined the site on the bridge of her nose. I exhaled a long breath to steady my shot.

A NECESSARY TASK - jennifer pieroni

Someone left the garage door open. Orange cats rush out as she gets closer, not exactly feral but rough. It doesn't matter anymore who leaves the door up. What matters is why these cats choose the privacy when the yard is right there.

necessary

She starts the car but notices the trunk is lifted. Leaving the car running, she goes around to close it. He is a hump inside, just starting to move.

necessary

"What are you doing in there?" she asks her husband.

necessary

He rolls onto his back, his knees still held up to his chest. A ripe rash still covers the left side of his face, the upholstery far scratchier and dirtier than the area made for passengers.

necessary

"I was in a dream," he says. "We were arrested but neither of us was guilty. So we ran away to the car and hid in the trunk."

"I didn't know you sleepwalk," she says.

"And then we fucked in the trunk. We both fit, which seems impossible to me now."

"I think so," she says. "Are you getting out?"

"I should," he says. Where are you going? What is that smell?"

necessary

She sees cats digging in the rosemary, cats everywhere. "A short trip to perform a necessary task," she says.

SIMULACRUM - roxane gay

My boyfriend and I sit at the bar in a bar in West Hollywood. The bartenders aren't interested. Our seats are made from narrow bodies. I'm drinking an improbably-named martini. He's nursing a Scotch on the rocks even though a man doesn't drink Scotch on the rocks, according to his father. We wear skinny jeans, vintage t-shirts, working to look like we don't have a look. Suddenly, the bar is silent - a perfectly choreographed moment. Everyone stares at the entrance - self-absorbed people temporarily absorbed by something else. It's Audrina and Lauren from The Hills, not really from The Hills. I can distinguish somewhat between reality and TV. I shake my boyfriend's shulder but he is concentrating on an indeterminate spot in the opposite direction. He is pretending not to know who Audrina and Lauren are even though we watch The Hills every Monday, before that we watched Laguna Beach and our subscription to Us Weekly is in his name.

RETREAT - dave clapper

We are in search of free hors d’oeuvres, me and Jane – Jane from H.R., Jane who is exactly as plain as her name implies, Jane, who, for now anyway, for this company retreat, is my kindred spirit in broke-ass hangover land.
retreat
We were told, damn it, that there were free hors d’oeuvres. Everyone seems to have had some and has glowing reviews of this canape, that crab cake, the other spinach puff. And they tell us how to get there with vague hand gestures and you-can’t-miss-its, and we do miss it again and again and again.
retreat
We give up when we see a food service tray outside a door with a “Do Not Disturb” sign. Sounds of athletic sex inside make the door-hanger flap. Or maybe it’s the A.C.
retreat
We don’t care. We see the half-eaten B.L.T. and descend on it. It’s not enough, but it’s all we have.
retreat
And Jane puts her finger down her throat and pukes right there. I have three thoughts: 1) Jane has low self-esteem; 2) I could probably get laid; 3) I’m hard.
retreat
So I ask, “Do you wanna fuck?”
retreat
She doesn’t look surprised or disgusted, but she doesn’t look interested. “No,” she says, and wipes her mouth on the back of her sleeve.