* From now on you VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE
Three contestants are left: Coco, Utah, and Olaf. Read their writings (click on their names to read their latest posts or click on HOME and scroll down) and VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE based on how well you felt they all responded to the Round 10 Challenge. You have until 9am  NOVEMBER 14th EST to vote. You can find out who was eliminated and learn what the Round 10 challenge is in a video that will be posted after the poll closes.

]]> http://www.fourthnight.com/2009/11/vote-for-your-favorite-round-10/feed/ 23 http://www.fourthnight.com/2009/11/utah-10/ http://www.fourthnight.com/2009/11/utah-10/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:12:44 +0000 Utah http://www.fourthnight.com/?p=3419 Round 10 Challenge – Kill off one of your characters (Word limit – 1200 words)

Read UTAH 9 here (see “Similar Posts” at the bottom of this post for any earlier entries)

*          *            *

Janet Garver, the wife of the Super 8 front desk clerk, had lost her daughter in a car accident, so when her husband told her one of the motel guests was looking for her missing daughter, she took it upon herself to assist. Delia needed the help. For starters, she was desperate for income. In her wanderings over the past three years she had blazed through all her savings. If she continued this way she would have to sell her farm over the next year.

Due to the recession and all-time high unemployment, jobs were scarce for out-of-staters. But Janet was close friends with the owners of the Halfway House restaurant on 22A, and after a brief phone call told Delia there was a position for her there as a waitress if she wanted it. Janet assumed Delia would turn it down. The diner was forty miles south of the motel, about an hour commute each way, and the salary was lower than average for the Burlington area.

To Janet’s surprise, Delia jumped at the offer. It was ideal for her, though she didn’t elaborate why. There was no point in explaining to Janet that she had come to Vermont to scour the shores of Lake Champlain because of a dream. The Halfway House was a straight shot from Burlington down US7 and 22A, the major north/south route running parallel to Lake Champlain. Delia could combine her work commute with explorations of the lake’s perimeter.

On Monday, November 9th, Delia began her first shift. Her job had always been to put food on other people’s tables, although not quite so explicitly. In another strange inversion of circumstances, most of her customers were farmhands.

At first Delia kept a low profile about Corey but she soon recognized that not only was it impossible to maintain anonymity as a small town diner waitress but also that she was in a unique position to gather information about her possible whereabouts. She no longer avoided talking about her search for Corey. Naturally there were a number of customers who thought she had lost her wits. The standard explanation Delia gave for why she was in Vermont was that a Greyhound bus driver three years ago claimed he saw a girl who resembled Corey board a bus to Burlington. It wasn’t the most compelling lead. But then again, as many of them muttered quietly over their coffees while Delia tended the counter, they too would probably grasp at anything in her situation.

Delia had been working at the Halfway House for two months when Jacob’s station wagon pulled into the parking lot. Since meeting Corey there three years ago Jacob had only come one other time. He rarely drove along that stretch of 22A and he even more rarely stopped along the way.

Once Jacob took his seat, Delia came out from behind the counter with a menu. “Something to drink?”

“I’ll just have a club sandwich and onion rings.”

He stared out the window while waiting for his order. Delia brought him a glass of ice water with the sandwich and rings. “You from these parts or heading somewhere?”

The skin under Jacob’s eye twitched. “Just traveling. Heading south.” It was obvious he wasn’t interested in small talk.

The only other customers, an elderly couple, paid up and left. He noticed Delia pushed the cash register shut with her hip the same way Corey did with the kitchen drawers. Jacob ordered two slices of cherry pie to go.

“Keep the change,” he mumbled as he headed to the door. He grabbed the door handle but then froze in his tracks. Pinned up on the corkboard was a Missing Person flyer with Corey’s photo. Delia was chopping walnuts at the counter for the maple walnut pies. She looked up and saw Jacob looking at the flyer. The sound of walnuts crunching under the chopping knife stopped.

“Do you recognize her?” It was silent.

Jacob glanced over at Delia and shook his head. Then he put his hood up and walked outside. Delia returned to her duties. The engine of Jacob’s station wagon roared to life. The sound of the motor climbed in pitch and then faded away into silence.

She stopped chopping the nuts and looked up slowly at the door. She again saw the image of the man looking over at her, putting his hood on, and then looking away. It was the same face. The same face from the computer screen three years ago. The same face except with a goatee. The chopping knife fell with a clatter from her hand as her throat constricted. Two slices of cherry pie to go… She rushed outside, a cry lodged in her throat. The station wagon, which she had never seen, was gone.

*          *            *

While her mother was serving Jacob, Corey was standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror, looking at herself in side profile. Her ribs were visible and her shoulder blades jutted out sharply. She ran her hands over her stomach. The nightmare she had awoken to that morning was playing out in her head again. She was in a sunny cornfield, with birds whistling about her. The corn was almost ready for harvest. Hungry, she reached for the closest ear and shucked it. But no matter how much husk she peeled away, she couldn’t find the cob underneath. She tried another ear and then another, but there were no kernels in any of them.

With her hands on her belly, Corey looked at her reflection as the tears ran down her face. Finally, scared but determined, she wiped her face dry. Then she walked out of the kitchen and ran as fast as she could into the corner of the table. Doubling over, she fell to the ground. She stood up and ran again. And again. When Jacob arrived he found her on the floor. She was unconscious and bleeding between her legs.

Read OLAF 9 here (see “Similar Posts” at the bottom of this post for any earlier entries)

The gillnetter Jealous Tides was the only vessel they’d seen all morning. Ron had brought Annikki and Ransu out thirty miles offshore to The Fingers on the northern edge of Jeffrey’s Ledge. He’d intended to stay in coastal waters but Annikki pleaded he take them out. The spiked coffees he’d been drinking made it easier to sway him.

Alka Seltzer hadn’t done the job that morning. The Robert Benchley quote “The only cure for a real hangover is death” spoke from the fridge door magnet like a grim prophesy. He’d never been one for hair of the dog and he never drank before fishing but he hadn’t been in his right mind recently. So he jacked up his coffee with Kahlua and Baileys. It eased the headache. A few more cups and he almost felt himself again.

It was flat calm with steel blue skies. The Fingers was a classic spot for tuna, a place where you could run into big fish. But there hadn’t been much going on out there recently. It would likely amount to a day of glorified whale watching.

At 24, Annikki was almost a decade older than Ransu. She mothered her brother over everything from sunscreen to seasickness. Ron had expected Ransu to be the one enthusiastic about fishing and Annikki the one lukewarm but it was the opposite. Ransu was as morose as she was upbeat. In baggy jeans and a hoodie, he spent most of the day slouching on deck while Annikki and Ron sat in the tuna tower.

“Don’t mind him,” Annikki told Ron, looking back at Ransu, who was sitting on an overturned bucket near the stern looking out at sea. “He’s just shy.”

Ransu wasn’t sulking out of shyness. The previous night he overheard Annikki speaking with Olga in low tones about Ron. It was then he realized his mother had feelings for another man besides his father. In that instant Ron had transformed to him from a friendly fisherman to a threat to his parents’ marriage.

Annikki, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than her mother and Ron to reunite. She’d felt this way even before meeting Ron. She resented her stepfather, whom she saw as frigid and undeserving of her mother. Olga first told Annikki about Ron last year, about how she’d been unable to bury that part of her past. It was Annikki who’d suggested the trip to Hagan’s Harbor. She even tried scheming a way for Pellervo to stay behind but her mother wouldn’t hear of it. Olga was convinced the trip would serve to put old demons to pasture. Annikki had other plans. She was sure her mother’s future happiness lay with Ron.

By noon it had climbed to eighty degrees. In the distance a whale spouted, its vapor hanging in the air. Annikki removed her sweater and tied it around her waist. She wore a short tank top. She and Ron worked their way through a thermos of coffee and kahlua, buzzed and laughing, as Ron told her about tuna fishing, or if you were down on your luck, tuna wishing.

He told her how he and his deckhand spent a good part of their summers in the tuna tower, the days long and hot with the summer sun high in the sky. From the tower’s height they would scan the ocean for signs that tuna might be nearby: schools of mackerel or a fishy smell or circling birds or larger sea life like whales or porpoises, for where there is life there is more life. If it was morning they might sight the splashes of feeding tuna or in the afternoon see their long wakes running into the breeze. They could go for days without sighting tuna and Ron’s feet would be sore from standing and his eyes tired from searching.  But then they would have the tuna running before them and Ron would climb out to the tuna stand, which projected twenty-two feet out from the bow. Soon he would be perched in the basket, guiding the deckhand with quick gestures – to the left, cut right, faster, slower – the tuna still running before them. Then all the long days of fruitless searching were worthwhile, worth every empty-handed evening, and he forgot the fatigue of his feet and his eyes and there was nothing but the chase.

In his mind he saw the tuna running before them. The harpoon raised, poised, hurled. For a moment hanging there in mid-air before the hit. A flurry onboard. Hoisting up that beautiful creature. Making the bleeding cuts behind the pectoral fin. The gas hissing out of the puncture. Sawing off the head. The insides spilling out. The blood dyeing the boat’s wake. Scraping out the cavity. Packing the fish into the ice hold. Slicing open the stomach, long as a woman’s thigh, out of nothing but curiosity to see the herring and squid and whatever else once served as the tuna’s fare. Washing the death from the deck. And then, in the nights, waking to climb up and urinate under the stars with the sea splashing glitter and climbing down below again to fall asleep to the sounds of whales swimming under the hull.

“Show me what it’s like,” Annikki said, snapping him from his reverie.

“What?”

“To hold the harpoon. On the tuna stand.”

Ron paused. “Ransu,” he yelled, motioning him up. “I need you to take the helm.” Ransu climbed sullenly up the ladder. “Just hold her steady,” Ron said, giving him the wheel. He pointed to the shocker, the button that triggers the current that runs through the throwing line and harpoon that electrocutes the fish. “Just whatever the hell you do, don’t push this button.”

Anniki and Ransu were arguing in Finnish so Ron climbed down the ladder. A few minutes later Annikki descended. With her arms overhead the bottom of her tank top came up high on her lower back. Her jeans were ripped in several places below the seat, exposing the pale skin of her upper hamstrings. She looked down and he turned aside, pretending to be busy at the side rail.

They went to the bow. “Careful. Hold on with both hands,” he told her as she walked out along the tuna stand over the water. The harpoon lay perched crosswise over the basket. He followed close behind her. Once she climbed into the basket, he freed the harpoon and brought it around so the dart pointed forward with the bow. He reached around her with one arm and showed her where to grasp the rod.

He leaned in, his chin just above her shoulder. The mix of coffee and alcohol, of salty ocean breeze and faint perfume, made for a heady combination. Standing in the basket with his arms around Annikki and the ocean sprawling before them, he was happier than he’d been in years. It wasn’t to last for long. Within the hour one of them would be dead.

Read COCO 9 here (see “Similar Posts” at the bottom of this post for any earlier entries)

Say bye to Cyprus Frank says. He look at me and then back at road. You don’t believe me do you? About Washington.

I laugh again but this time also am little sad. Biggest dream I have is to leave here and go to America and make new life. Easy to believe in dream when chance of it to happen is far away but not when close to happening. Because it can kill your dream. Anyone can hope for impossible. More hard to believe when it have chance to come true.

Sun rising behind us and hole earth glowing. I can’t remember last time I been outside early in morning. Only time I see warm light like this any more is when sun go down. Always this is before cabaret so colour of light like this carry bad feeling for me.

Ahead of us airplane make take off. Airport soon appears. Frank turns into car rental place and parks car.

You don’t believe I take you to Washington? he say. I shake my head. He reaches in his bag and hands to me American passport. Open he says.

I open. Inside is foto of me. Under it say Ivana Braun.

We’ll have to make pretend like your my wife. Its not best fake passport but we need only to get you out of Cyprus. Into America isn’t problem. I have the special clearance for that.

Its crazy what he’s saying. Like I’m having fantasia about man coming from America to take me away and its coming true. Ok maybe not so much romantic man like in fantasia but also that make it more real. Like piece of good meat. Raw it look better without fat but never taste as good after you cook it. And anyway once you cook meat you can cut fat away always.

Frank looks outside. I don’t have time to explain detail. Stavros and Yiannis are mixed up in something too much big and we need you in America to make testemony. Don’t worry. We protect you there.

Frank reach back into his bag and pull out a Louise Ferre wig of long brown straight hair. He put it on my head. I look in mirror. Incredible how real it looks.

Its real human hair he say. You don’t find these in Cyprus.

Then he get from his bag a necklace. It has heart of half pink crystal and half silver. He place it over my neck.

I turn heart round in my fingers. Crystal is very much pretty. Swarovski. Why do you give this to me I say?

Just keep it close to your heart.

Then Frank take my hand and places wedding ring over my finger. His hand a little it shakes. I stare at his face while he slides ring. He avoids to look back. Almost like shy. Then he goes to drop off car keys.

Now I know he’s not making pretend about America. It make no sense to me but I decide no matter what reason he want to fly me I’ll go. I did long enough the cabaret. I’m ready for change. For new adventure. My passport and everything is back in my room but its okay for me this. When you own nothing you have nothing to lose. When you want new identity you don’t need old passport.

For half hour Frank practice with me our pretend story about when we did the marriage and where we live and detail like that in case security ask. He make quiz to me and have me repeat everything back so I know it correct.

I tell him it sound like we have boring life together. He make a smile. It will get more exciting I promise he say. Then he look away almost like ashamed to have shown little emotion to me.

In airport we go to desk for the Business Class. I can’t believe. Frank gets our tickets and we walk to security.

Let me make the talking Frank whisper as he take my hand. My hand feels small in his. He holds strong but not dominational. Not like grip of man trying to own me. His thumb make small caress on my fingers. Maybe just my imagination and fantasia. But walking towards security holding his hand I feel for moment like he’s really my husband and we’re just hear in Cyprus on vacation and now returning to Washington. Really I believe this. To believe in lie is not so hard when you want too much to believe its reality.

Security guard examine our passports and ask Frank some few questions. I stand looking around at airport and suddenly have big fear my husband Steven will show up. Fear he has come from Ukraine to find me and will catch me here with Frank and bring in police for arrest to take me back to hopeless life in Donetsk. Fear always come to me like this any time something good might happen. Maybe its how I prepare myself if something bad go wrong.

But of course life isn’t like bad action movie. Steven is in Donetsk. Security guard ask few questions then wave us inside. I squeeze Frank’s hand and we walk toward x ray machines. That’s when I hear someone yell Ivana.

Frank pull my hand back like warning but its too late. I make mistake to turn head back and make eye contact with Yiannis. He’s wearing jacketa with silk shirt opened half way down chest. When he sees its me his eyes open wide and anger take his face like I never seen before. Not look you want to see. Look of violencia.

Yiannis start running at us and pulls out gun from inside jacketa. He shoots. First shot goes over our head as woman screams.

Frank pulls me to ground and throw himself on top of me like to protect me. More shots and people shouting. This time Frank’s body jerk into me with each shot and I know bullets are hitting him. Then I hear few more shots except from more far away. Shooting stops and I only hear yelling and running.

Frank’s hand moves shaking and trembling over my chest to necklace. He grabs it and squeezes hard.

Open your heart Ivana he gasp to me. He’s making choking sounds. Open your heart.

Then he puts necklace under my blousa like to hide it. Like it’s important nobody else know about it.

I see boots running toward me. They pull Frank off me. His arms and head hang down loose when they pull him away. Then suddenly whole scene go silent. Around me people running and shouting except everything slow motion and without sound. Almost like peaceful scene except everyone have expression of panic.

Yiannis is nearby face down in his own blood where police shot him dead. Police are kneeling over Frank. I try to see more but can’t too much well because my fingers make blocked my vision. Then I realise I’m kneeling with my hands covering my face. And then from this silence I hear my own cries and sobbing. But only for moment. Then everything go black.

The eliminated contestant assigns the Round 10 challenge. The challenge Nora gave  - “Kill off your main character” -- would effectively end at least one of the contestants’ stories, so I’ve amended it slightly to ”Kill off one of your characters.” The word limit is 1200 words.

See the video for more details. Includes footage from the 2009 New York Marathon, the NYC Halloween Parade, and the dog costume contest The Great PUPkin.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2NjqucylrA