Friday, October 21, 2011

Can You Leave Us Breathless Contest Entry

Brenda Drake's blog is hosting another contest:  Can You Leave Us Breathless? with some amazing prizes.  It is open today, Oct 21st.  Feel free to enter something that will "take their breath away."

Meanwhile, here is my 303 word entry, an except from my manuscript, Kingdom of Obsession (title still pending):


We lived on a curvy street, and the sun was hitting the leaves just right to make the bend in the road framed beautifully.  I took off the lens and shoved it into my pocket and shot a few photos.  I heard a loud beep, turned around just in time to see the yellow school bus shatter my mailbox into a million pieces.  I saw the look of terror on the driver's face, trying to slam on the brakes again and again.  And then I died...

Or that's what I thought when I saw my dead mother standing over me.

“Oh, thank Heavens!”  She clutched her chest with older hands than I remembered. 

Catherine, my ex-best friend, was standing on the other side of my mother.  “It’s about time!”  She had put on a few pounds than when I had last seen her, eight years ago.

And the first words out of my mouth in the afterlife were, “Cat, you died?”  My mother and Cat looked at each other, quizzically.

“Still hanging in there, thank you very much.”  She scoffed.

“Wait… I’m not dead?” 

My mother was wide-eyed, hair grayed and falling across her face in wiry tufts.  “Honey, you’ve been in a coma for the past nine years.”

My spine tingled until it stopped feeling, everything was shifting sideways, and my vision went blurry.  I heard this rapid beeping somewhere off in the distance and my brain swelled.  “Where is Dennis?”  The two figures standing over me looked at each other.  “Where is he?!”  I grabbed my mother’s old leathery arm.  “Where is Asher?  Where’s my son?”  Nurses came running in.  I was being pushed down into my bed.  I couldn’t breathe with everyone on top of me.  I thrashed in a panic before I felt a sharp prick in my arm.

7 comments:

  1. Great! I like the premise of this.

    The dialogue "Wait... I'm not dead?" followed by My mother... makes it seem like her mom is the one that said this, when I think it's the MC that said it. (I think you need to have My mother... on the next line?)

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  2. I found this really sad as well as tense!

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  3. Well done scene, emotional and intense.

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  4. Rachel! Fun reading something of yours. I like how you pull us back and forth through what could be a surreal/fantasy scene, back to reality.

    One thing, perhaps re-phrase: "She had put on a few pounds than when I had last seen her..." --> She had put on a few pounds since I had last seen her?

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  5. It was a good one. First it was funny because mother was saying "oh there you are" and girlfriend saying it was about time as if they were waiting for him to die! :D But later, it broke my heart. I really want to know what happened next! Nice post.

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  6. Very emtional. Imho, it's one of the best entries so far. I would definitely read more of this story although I'm not (yet) sure if it's a contemporary or a fantasy/time twist story.

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  7. Thank you for participating in Can You Leave Us Breathless? Blogfest Contest. Your entry has been judged.

    Good luck!

    The Judges
    (Connie, Joannine, Marissa, and Brenda)

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