Show and Tell Contest

Title:

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Author: Mystery Writer


Jack’s New Balance running shoes slapped against the hot blacktop parcourse trail and slowed. He slogged up the last incline to the recreation center and trudged past three-year-olds splashing in the kiddies’ wading pool. He threw himself onto the nearest wrought-iron bench and sat panting. The wide expanse of California sky was so blue it hurt his eyes. [Great description! I can see that!]

I always thought I’d age gracefully, but my God, forty! Jack cursed and picked at the three-corner tear in his new T-shirt. He stared down at his potbelly and shook his head. Who was it said forty is the new thirty? That guy should be locked up in an asylum.

Across the grass expanse, a slender blonde with a red fanny pack jogged in place, right hand pressed to her left wrist. It couldn’t be Mary Ellen. But man! She looks just like her. In his mind’s eye, Jack could see his wife at his birthday party in Compton holding his three-layer chocolate cake ablaze with candles. He remembered her again as she stormed out of their San Francisco apartment. “You’re old, Jack,” the Mary Ellen in his mind kept saying, [Since we already know it’s the Mary Ellen in his mind, I don’t think you need to emphasize it again. Perhaps “the memory of her words played over and over in his mind”? ] “You think old. You drive like an old man. I thought the age difference wouldn’t matter, but I was wrong.” Jack pressed his fist to his lips and looked away.

The blonde-haired jogger sprinted toward the rec center and up the hill. She stopped in front of Jack. She bent over with her back to him and tied her shoelace. Jack’s eyes narrowed at the sight of her rounded bottom—taut flesh peeking out of her yellow nylon running shorts. He noticed her shoulder-length hair separated into damp tendrils. She popped open the top of her plastic sports bottle, splattered water on her face, then bent her head and poured a steady stream on the back of her neck. She turned toward him. “Do you mind if have a seat?”

Jack shrugged and waved his hand toward the bench beside him. He pretended to be interested in the family picnic in the nearby gazebo, but he caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye. The fanny pack strapped to her waist was moving—first just a little, but then it twitched and shook. Jack gaped as the pack slithered open and a slender, green finger with a bulbous tip snaked out of the gap in the zipper followed by another exactly like it. The two antennas writhed like maggots.

Jack shuddered. He watched the rest of the thing emerge inch-by-inch: first, the blue head covered with horns, then the shrewd, red eyes, and finally the dark, leering mouth lined with rows of needle-sharp teeth. Jack drew his head back.

Snap! He felt those teeth clatter together a scant half-inch away from his face, smelled the vile, metallic breath of the thing. [This is great showing, but how did Jack get so close to the creature? It was emerging from her fanny pack but that means it couldn’t be very large. ] The shapely blonde’s head rotated around. She grappled back fast as a snake strike to stuff the creature back into the pack and close the zipper. Then she bolted toward the thick woods near the park’s perimeter.

Jack felt his legs move him off the bench, and without conscious thought, he followed her. His knee joints felt like broken glass as he crashed through thick copses of birch and aspen. He wondered if he would ever catch her with her extra set of (what are they) legs (?) scampering through wild roses and Christ-thorn.[She has an extra pair of legs?] Spines tore at his legs, but he pounded after her anyway.

Aspens gave way to pines and hemlocks. Jack’s breath rasped in his throat. His chest felt like liquid fire. He staggered a little and slowed, when a giant of a man in a khaki greatcoat stepped out from behind a tree. Jack sidestepped and hid in a trio of shaggy cedars. He trembled.

Jack watched as the blonde crouched down on her face in the leaves and pine litter, hands held out in entreaty. [If she is crouching on her face, how can she hold her hands out? I would think she’d be using her hands to keep that crouched position. Hmm…] He heard her whimper. But it wasn’t until the khaki-coated man spoke in a voice like tearing steel—until that man drew a weapon and blasted her to jelly that Jack felt warm urine run down his legs, fill his running shoes and puddle on the forest floor.






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