Oct
1
2009
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*Tuck was eliminated in Round 5
Read Tuck 5 here
Within five minutes, Coco Chanel had gone down on her knees and was humming prayers in worship of Frank’s godhood. Finally he pushed her head away. “That’s enough,” he growled. “I didn’t fly into this Middle Eastern hellhole to catch anything I have to declare at customs.”
“Nyet please Mister Frank I not has reel man in to many years. Me too much horney. Me love you long time.”
Frank chuckled. Goddamn slatterns. Once you seen one you seen them all. Coco butted her forehead against his palm, whinnying like a horse for its sugar cube.
“I hate to do this, sugar,” Frank said, slapping her across the face with his free hand, “but it’s for your own good. I’m not here for funny business. Tell me what I need to know and I’ll give you what you need.” Continue reading
Sep
20
2009
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Round 5 Challenge: Incorporate this image into your next passage of no more than 500 words. You can interpret this challenge as you see fit.
*click on the thumbnail to see a larger image
Frank’s local contact drove him to Limassol Divisional Police Headquarters. It was mid-August and the desert heat was ball-dripping. No wonder the region was so barbaric and backwards. Frank wouldn’t want to be a productive member of society either if his gonads were swinging at his knees all summer. If he were a lesser man and had grown up in a climate like this he’d probably be strapping bombs to himself too.
As he expected, the police station was a shithole. He counted seven cockroaches. And that wasn’t counting the cops. He’d have the department FedEx them a gift pack of Raid and a police manual.
“Welcome, Mr. Frank,” the police commissioner said in nervous broken English. Like other Middle Easterners the Cyprian was short, dark, hairy, sweaty and reeked of cheap cologne and stale body odor. Continue reading
Sep
9
2009
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Read TUCK 1 here
Read TUCK 2 here
Read TUCK 3 here
Round 4 Challenge: Weave an element of Fyor’s story into your passage. It should be no more than 450 words.
Frank looked out the window of his first class seat at the receding Washington monument. They usually flew him out on private jets but intelligence was tightening its belt unlike the administration.
“Sir, what can I get you to drink?” the stewardess asked Frank.
“Take a guess.”
“Martini. Shaken not stirred,” she said coyly.
“Stirred not shaken. Shaking bruises the gin. They don’t tell you that in the movies.”
As she served him the drink she leaned so low he could smell the Gucci Envy on her neck. Her body was crying out to become the latest notch on Frank Braun’s Mile High belt. But he wasn’t risking national security for some easy bathroom thrill. Ralph Fiennes could afford such shenanigans but not Frank Braun. Continue reading
Read TUCK 1 here
Read TUCK 2 here
Round 3 Challenge: Incorporate the death of a dog into your next passage. It should be no more than 400 words long.
If the dead doberman Frank found a week later on his doorstep next to the Washington Times delivery was an attempt to scare him off the case, it backfired. Standing in his bathrobe, a mug of black coffee in hand, Frank scanned the empty street. A note was pinned to the hound’s flank. He bent down to read it:
Love, Blackjack5555
The letters had been individually cut out and glued from a newspaper. By the font he could tell it was from the New York Times. Frank chortled. It didn’t go wasted on him that the would-be assassins were trying to scare Frank off by sending him kindergarten messages made out of the same liberal rag that had spent all of last year creaming itself over Obama as the next messiah and all of this year making up excuses for him.
Frank sipped his coffee and contemplated the note. Most death threats were like spam to him: everyday nuisances to be promptly chucked in the trash. But this one intrigued him. In part it was the early delivery. That the terrorists had already found him out meant they had breached intelligence security. But mostly it was the message: Love, Blackjack5555.
A lesser agent would have interpreted the signoff as a signature. But Frank Braun wasn’t top dog for nothing. “Jack” also meant ‘to hunt by jacklight.’ Sandwich that between “Black” and “5555” – or May 5, 1955, the day that West Germany became a sovereign state, in the same year that opened with the assassination of the president of Panama – and the reference became a veiled allusion to the coming assassination of America’s first negro president by violent non-state actors.
But the most devious part of the signoff was the word “Love.” It was a devil’s wink. Whoever composed this note knew full well Frank would decipher it. It wasn’t a death threat, after all. It was a declaration of war. Frank Braun was up against one twisted motherfucker.
He swallowed the last of his coffee then shoved the corpse with his foot off the porch. He’d dispose of it after breakfast. There was no point in calling in the CSI team. The results would just send them on a useless goose chase.
As he went back inside, he made a mental note that the grass needed mowing.
Round 5 Challenge: Incorporate this image into your next passage of no more than 500 words. You can interpret this challenge as you see fit.
