Saturday, February 16, 2008

The winners are in for my writing contest

Wow, that was a really hard decison--so many great writers here on etsy. The list of words were pretty strange, but somehow, everyone managed to incorporate them into their stories: dame, weave, gumshoe, galloshes, torrential rains, umbrella, peanut butter and jelly, stilletoes, swagger, stormy, and weiner dog.

These are the two winners who will get to pick out some artwork from my shop (excluding originals) as prizes:

http://wolflodge.etsy.com


Torrential rains always bring out the romantic in me. A stormy day is a welcome friend, as comfortable & as familiar as an old shirt, or a peanut butter & jelly sandwich & a cup of cocoa. An umbrella is foreign, an insult to nature’s intent; rather I prefer to gaze up at the clouds & thank them for their gift, arms outstretched, luxuriating in the sharp, prickling stillettoes of raindrops on my face, as they rush to greet the earth again.

No galoshes for me, no drunken weave around the puddles & pools & piles of water frolicking in the low places where they are happiest. No squealing skipping swagger, no dodging dame decrying the damage to her ‘do, with a newspaper slung over her hair. I notice the colorful ad with the photos of weiner dogs on the page as it darkens with the spatter of the drops, & I am drawn closer to discover the identity of the advertiser as the paper-hatted stranger twitters by. I chuckle at my compulsive curiosity, like a washed-out gumshoe who cannot stop looking for clues, even in the rain.

http://calloohcallay.etsy.com

If it weren’t for the torrential rains and that damn weiner dog, sitting in the middle of the doorway like he owned the place, I would have kept on going and never would have noticed the dame in the galoshes. I mean, she wasn’t much too look at, standing there in that disgusting gray overcoat, her complexion like peanut butter and jelly. Grape jelly.

“Got a light?” she said, in a voice that reminded me of Carrotop on coke. She stuck an umbrella out and blocked my way. I tried to weave around it, but she hooked me around the ankle and pulled tight.

“Hey, gumshoe,” she said. “I’m talking to you.”

I turned to look at her then. She had a nose like a stilletto, a mouth like a head of cauliflower. “Kind of a stormy night, ain’t it?” she said, and I could tell that she was coming onto me. “What of it?” I said, trying to maintain my usual swagger but she unnerved me, this dame. I knew what she wanted, and I knew that in the end I would give it to her.

I always had a soft spot for peanut butter and jelly.

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Thanks everyone, for giving it a go!

3 comments:

Field Notes said...

Those are fantastic! What a cool challenge!!!! WOW I feel humbled and inspired... note to self, must practice writing :D

Jessica Doyle said...

Congrats you two! :)

Callooh Callay said...

Thanks, and thanks rtisan for running this contest. It was so hard to pick just one!