Paper Pacifiers for the Twinkle-toed Spirit
Sequana Whiteside
The plan was flawless if you adjusted your tolerance level and squinted your perspective. Now six years later, even Cover Girl didn’t have enough cosmetics to hide the blemishes in my old outline. All I had to do was try to adapt to bullshit instead of ballet and accept my parents’ ideas of what was logical for my future.
Symptoms of a wrong decision started to develop shortly after law school when my spirit began screaming hail Marys despite the fact that I’m not Catholic. Now I have an infection of regret that buckles my knees every time I stand before a jury telling courtroom fiction to diminish my opposing party’s justice.
Last night, heaven sent me a revelation by breaking the dam over the lump in my throat causing an overflow of tears and mucus down my face. I then broke my contract with practicality and drew up my two weeks resignation.
Today was my last cocktail party-conference with Clayton and Burk Inc. I absorbed the peace in the autumn day and massaged my sanity by knocking back three martinis. I made my way toward an Employer stuffing his face with appetizers and letting happy hands slip across the bottoms of female clients that passed by him. A few words and a few papers later my correlation with the company and my dejection were terminated. Maybe I wasn’t going to dancing now, but I can at least return the fond feelings life has for me.
Second Place Entry:
James Deluca
James is a twenty-two year old engineer who works for a company near Albany Boston. He received his degree in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute near where he did research in metallic nanostructures. When James is not at work he enjoys running marathons, playing soccer and watching football. In what free time he can find James also enjoys writing and reading. In addition to his short stories and essays which have placed in various writing competitions James also took part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November completing The Kinslayer which is his first full length novel. James hopes one day to go to work and not have to go to any meetings.
The plan was flawless; as soon as the guests started arriving I would volunteer to go out back to gather some wood for the evening’s fire. Within twenty minutes of stepping outside, the TV would be flipped on by someone, and everyone would become too entranced by the pair of old men repeating that the team that managed to score the most points would probably end up winning the game. I have nothing against football—just the inane babble from the announcers and from my relatives pointing out that, “…it is third down and six so if they don’t get six yards they will have to punt.” Every year the pre-Thanksgiving dinner snacks on the coffee table have looked more and more like incendiary devices. With this mounting urge to use these snacks in nontraditional ways, it is understandable that I would elect to escape to the backyard and then to the forest for a hike rather than end up in prison for murdering my second cousin twice removed with brie topped saltines.
Sadly my plans for escaping the planned meals of a federal prison were thwarted by my mother’s short statement, “Hurry up and get your jacket on, we want the get to Grandma’s before the opening kickoff.” Grandma’s place was worse than —she lived in an apartment downtown with no yard and no excuses to slip outside. The only conciliation is that I was convicted of attempted murder with a cracker topped with summer-sausage; my Grandma is lactose intolerant.Alcatraz
Third Place Entry:
Existence
by Valentina Reikene
Brisbane, Australia is the place where I was born and have lived all my life. My parents immigrated to this country from Albania, so I am a first generation Australian. I am married and a mother of two boys aged 25 and 21 years of age. Following several years in the Australian travel industry, I became a mother. Since I was going to be at home with my babies, I decided to take on some study. That took around ten years but I finally completed a Bachelor Degree in Literature and Culture as well as two Post Graduate Qualifications in Linguistics and Teaching. When my children were older, I began lecturing in Tourism and Cross Cultural Communication at the Southbank Institute, Brisbane.
Recently I enrolled in a Creative Writing Degree at the Queensland University of Technology to satisfy a lifelong desire to write.
The plan was flawless; designed by a creator, therefore unique. A simple law kept it in place for generations. From the moment of their creation, those born with a human mind had instinctively known the truth about existence. Specifically, they understood their own part in the plan: that they were essential, no matter who they were, what they did or the way they appeared. There was nothing to question or change.
Each element of the plan was of equal importance and the removal or destruction of any element would cause an imbalance; disrupting the whole. This was part of the basic law. The perfection of the plan was such, that even the chaos that pervaded each of its fragments was governed by the basic law so finally, the chaos was perfect.
The illusion of time had deluded modern humans into thinking that the plan had broken down and that their lives should have been different. In their anxiety about death, they tried to improve nature and extend their lives. They clung to this world in desperation.
Even the loss of faith in modern humans was part of the plan and therefore no cause for fear. “The world’s lost its way”, they cried. Anxiety instantly disappeared however, when humans remembered that they were an essential part of the whole. There was no right and wrong in actions or appearance. Everything was valuable.
