WAUKESHA READS 2012
FLASH FICTION CONTEST:
WHO IS WATCHING YOU?

Thank you to all who submitted stories this year!

Read the winning entries.

Old at Night
By Alicia Zuberbier

She pats the pillow with her once slender fingers, and the dust of come to bed puffs out from her yawn. She already has her eyes closed when I slip under the sheets, but she is not sleeping.

Carolyn does not sleep at night.

I count the seconds between her breathing. Too fast for dreaming, too fast like the trains outside our window at three a.m. I’ve heard their passing for the last week, a deep rumble in the throat of night. And so has Carol.

I do not know why she watches me, but I can almost feel her fingers inside my mouth, counting my teeth; I can sense her stare, watching me inhale then exhale then inhale again. I noticed it one night a few weeks ago, the cool evaporation of breath on my neck. Carol breathes on me while she watches. She must be tallying up the hairs I’ve lost, the winkles I’ve gathered, and the weight I’ve gained.  In the mornings, she says I snore, that my airways are blocked, but I just say that people who sleep, snore. Carolyn does not snore.

Her arm lies across my chest. When she was young, it felt like a small cat curled up above my heart. Now I’m sure she is checking my pulse while I sleep, her hand on my chest, rising and falling with my ribcage.  She always says I cannot die before her.  What will she do, she says. Who will she watch, I think.

Trying to sleep is like having my whole body be a funny bone, one that twinges constantly.  The sheets are too heavy. The darkness is too black. She is selfish, putting this feeling into my brain so I cannot enjoy the night anymore. I used to stay up for hours with her. The yokey color of a sunrise reminded us that we had spent the whole night awake, talking about our future and quoting the bad movies playing after midnight on TV.  Now I stay up because of her. When I look over at my wife, expecting to find her eyes stuck to my skin, Carolyn is folded up neatly inside herself, making me doubt my convictions.  Her lids are purple curtains, drawn over the eyes I once fell in love with. She pretends to sleep at night the way I pretend I am awake in the day.

The window is open, letting in cool September air. The leaves whisper to one another outside, likely planning their escape to the ground before mother tree notices. Our children have gone too. Not even in the state anymore, but like red wings, they migrate around, and we aren’t sure if they ever really come home. Carolyn used to wake at two so they could be fed, and even after they outgrew their bottles, she would still wake to check on them. Her attention is now on me at night. I’m sure of it.

The stars are pretty. Carol used to be pretty too. Little flecks of light once flickered like flames in her eyes as hair poured down her shoulders–dark like merlot.  Now the crust of age outlines her forehead. Her hair is always pulled back. She is old to me.

I must also be old to her.

Nothing Else
By Laura Lyons

Maybe it was the weekend that drove me to madness. The Fates had brewed an elixir of bizarre, unforeseeable events, poured it into my water Friday morning, and poisoned me with ill fortune for the next three days. Now here I lay, stiff in my bed, unable to find the will to move. Tears dripped down my face and soaked my pores, making the already unbearable night damp. At my side lay a wooden cross, pressed into my hip, promising to shield any demon that dared to rattle me from my sleep. My father, who had long passed, gave it to me as a very small child after devils had entered my dreams and drenched my thoughts in terror. Father swore it would fight away the brutes that plagued my thoughts. Thus far, it certainly had.

I lay there, dosing off, the tips of my eye lashes seeming to want an affair with the bottom most part of my eyes. Then, like a blessing, I finally slept.

It must have been midnight when I felt a tugging at my hip. The hands of the person did not brush against me, but only grasped the wooden frame of the cross, attempting to remove it from my side. The light glowing from the hall way was made visible since whoever had entered my room had left the door ajar. Sleep was still fresh in my sight, making my vision blurred and distorted, but the person had the silhouette of my mother and the same blue-green eyes. Out of rage and annoyance, I yelled at her to leave my room.

She turned sharply so that her blue-green eyes were hidden from me. Her body was a dark shadow against the light, moving quickly, almost running. Then as soon as she was in the hall, she faced me once again. “I saw you needed me,” she said in a hushed, distant voice.

I screamed loud enough so that I’m sure Father could hear. ”Leave me alone!”

Slowly, the person began to close the door, only stopping so that a crack remained and a single blue-green eye could be seen.

“Let me sleep!”

But that pale blue-green eye never moved, its stare never faltered. It stayed there, peering at me intently.
“My God Mother! Let me sleep!”

This time, the door closed, that eye disappearing completely. I turned back to the side I had been laying on, put the wooden cross next to me, and fell back asleep.

The next morning I woke to my mother rapping at my bedroom door. I opened my eyes, dressed slowly, still drowsy, and made my way downstairs. I sat down at the spot my mother had laid out for me. The eggs she had set out were running, their dull, yellow insides bleeding out, soaking the whites.

“What were you doing in my room this morning?” I cut my egg up further until the entire contents leaked out.

She turned those stunning blue-green eyes to me. “I wasn’t in your room last night.”

Putting my fork down, I pushed my eggs aside. Egg whites drowning in yoke didn’t seem appealing to me anymore. “Yes you did,” I said hesitantly. “I saw you. I felt you.”

My mother now had a serious look on her face. “I wasn’t in your room.” But, just as suddenly as she had become stern, she laughed. “You must have had a dream, nothing else!”

An uneasy feeling drowned my insides. It wasn’t a dream. It couldn’t have been. I felt that cross move, it woke me.

Nevertheless, I went to school. The image of those blue-green eyes haunted me. It felt as if they were still watching me, seeming to pry at my thoughts. I described the event to my dear friend. She said it was a dream and nothing else. This did not satisfy me. I went to my councilor’s office and told her the thoughts gnawing away at my mind. She, too, claimed it was a dream and nothing else. With these statements told in faith, I believed them. It had been a dream, and nothing else.

That very night, I fell asleep just the same as I had the night before. There came again the tugging at my hip, my wooden cross moving.

“Get out!” I screamed at the woman with pale blue-green eyes.

Once again, the woman turned and made her way quickly to the door.”I saw you needed me,” she said and, just as she did the previous night, she closed the door until it was only open a crack wide enough for a blue-green eye to peer through.

This time, I sat up, fist so tight that the nails dug into my palms. “Who are you?”

The woman’s gaze held strong, never blinking, never shifting.

“Who are you? What are you?” I was standing now, shouting.

Still she stared, never blinking, never shifting.

My heart pounded in my chest, beating so fast that I was sure that it would hit a rib wrong and burst completely. I took a step to the door and screamed again. “Friend or foe! Tell me who you are, make yourself known!”

I took another step. The blue-green eye was still watching me, peering deep into my soul.

“Why are you here? Let me be!” This time I flung the door open, only to see a beast, so horrifying, so morbid. Her body was thin and obscure, her face melting off her bones with her piercing blue-green eyes the only thing intact. Her eyes were laughing, clawing into my spirit. I reached out with both hands, grabbing to wring her neck out, to kill this phantom haunting me, but all I caught was air. I fell forward and hit my head hard on the wall in front of me, causing blood to ooze down my face. Through the blood, I saw that wooden cross lying on the floor, scorched with a missing limb, and nothing else.

Twelve O’ Clock
By Caitlin Martinez

Hello, my name is Ira Rodriguez, and this is the story of how I die.

I don’t know who he is, or what he wants, but he’s after me. I guess I should start at the beginning. It all started once I moved to the small town of Waukesha WI. You’ve probably never heard of it, unless you’ve lived there.

When we drove up to our house, I felt this weird, tingling feeling. I ignored it and stepped inside. Something was weird. I felt…watched. My mom must’ve noticed I was acting weird because she said to me, “Are you okay, honey?”

“I’m fine,” I told her. I don’t usually lie to my mom.

We unpacked a pretty good chunk of our things, before we decided to get some sleep. Our beds weren’t set up yet, so we just slept in sleeping bags.

I woke up late at night, and checked my watch, and saw it turn 12 o’ clock. I was about to go back to sleep, but I heard something. I could hear… breathing. Someone’s heavy breathing. I started to freak out, thinking that someone broke into our house, somehow. I grabbed my phone from my bag and flipped it open.

I searched all around my room, but I didn’t see anything. By the time I slipped back into my sleeping bag, the breathing had stopped. I was still a little scared, so I scooted my sleeping bag to the corner closest to me and waited.

I guess I must’ve fallen asleep because I woke up with a pretty bad headache the next day. But by the time I got on the bus, it was feeling better.

School was fairly normal…well…except for the janitor. When he walked past me (which happened a lot, actually), he looked at me like he wasn’t sure if I was human or not.

On the bus, I got a call on my cell phone. I flipped it open to answer the call. “Hello?”

“Are you…Ira Rodriguez?” said a gravelly voice.

“Who wants to know?”

“So that’s a yes.”

“Who are you?”

“I’ve been looking for you for quite a while now, Ira.”

“Who is this?”

“I’ll be coming for you, don’t worry.”

“What are you talking about? Who are you?”

“Until then, I’ll be watching you.”

“Wai-“

But he hung up.

The next day, at school, when I was trying to find my books in my locker, a note fell out. I picked it up. It said:

I’ve come for you.
At midnight tonight I will find you.
Wherever you are, I’ll be there.

After I read the note, the janitor came up to me. He didn’t say anything, he just stood there. “Umm excuse me?” I asked.

“You’re…your name is…”

“Ira.”

“Ira.” He echoed. Do you know what that means?”

“You mean my name? No, why?”

“Seen. It means seen”

“What are you trying to say?”

He glanced at the note.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I should have prevented this.

“What?” I asked, “Do you know who did this?”

“There’s nothing I can do now. I’m too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s my fault.”

“Wha-“

Then the bell rang.

“I’m so sorry.” He said and walked away.

I didn’t see him the rest of the day, but by then I knew. I figured it out.

Once I got home, I tried my best to act as normal as possible, but deep inside, I knew I was going to die tonight. I don’t know why, exactly, I just knew I would.

When I went to ‘bed’ (our actual beds still haven’t been set up yet), I planned my escape. I needed to go somewhere else, away from my family. Even if he knew where I lived, I didn’t want anyone else interfering and getting killed because of me.

The library. It was only a couple blocks away, and I could type my story. So at least people would know.

I changed into a t-shirt and jeans as quickly and quietly as I could. I took the note that I found in my locker. I looked at it for a while, but then I remembered I had to hurry. I stuffed it in my pocket grabbed a hairpin that was lying on the floor, to pick the lock.

I quietly ran downstairs and opened the coin jar. I grabbed a handful of coins to pay for the paper I was going to print. I hopped on my bike and rode. It felt like the longest bike ride of my life. My short, short life. It seemed to last forever. Being the last, I suppose it would be long. I parked my bike and chained it up.

Maybe my family could sell it afterwards. It didn’t matter right now. So I ran up the stairs past the statue of a fox and stopped at the door. I pulled the hairpin out of my pocket and picked the lock.

I’m not going to tell you exactly what I did to get in, because, you really shouldn’t break into the library. Once I got in, I started to lock it again, but then I realized it didn’t matter. He would find a way in anyway. If he wasn’t already here.

I ran to the computers in the back of the library, and turned one on. I opened up Word and started typing.

It’s almost midnight now and he’ll be here soon.

One. Two . Three. Four.

I hear him going through the door.

Five. Six. Seven. Eight.

I know that he’s not running late.

Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

He’s coming from behind the shelf.

He’s here now.

He’s right behind me.

Witness
By Alexander Plummer

It was a brisk autumn afternoon, and while Jack Blanco strangled his wife with a length of old piano wire, he noticed a crow sitting on the balcony railing of his upscale fifth-floor apartment.  It peered at him while his wife gurgled and clawed at his gloved hands.  Her feet drummed on the floor, knocking over the side-table with a crystal brandy snifter.  It shattered, and Jack gave her an admonishing shake as the crow cawed.

Her gurgles faded, her purple tongue stuck bloody between her teeth, and she went limp.  Jack checked his gold watch and held his position for another sixty seconds.  He wondered what to have for dinner.  Italian?

She stayed limp, and only then did Jack release the garrote.  He tucked the wire into his coat pocket, went out on the balcony, and took the fire escape to the street just as the bus arrived.  There was a crow perched on the bumper.  Wearing a hat he’d never worn before, hands in his coat, he paid the fare and rode the bus sixteen blocks.  Yes, he decided.  Italian.

He got off the bus and went down the alley to his left, where a man snored around a bottle of whiskey every day from five until eight next to his barrel fire.  As he walked, Jack removed gloves, hat, and coat, tossing them into the barrel without breaking stride as three crows cawed at him from the eaves of the building above.

Jack walked three chilly blocks to the shabby motel where he had taken pains for the past three months to arrange a sordid affair with his secretary, Joanna, every Thursday night after he left work.  This Thursday, he had dissolved two tablets of eszopiclone – the usual medication his tryst took every night – in her wine glass.  She had been asleep for two hours now and would be for four more.

A half-dozen crows sat on the roof of the street-facing building as he let himself in with his key.  Joanna snored in the middle of the bed, still naked.  He stripped down, slipped in next to her, and changed his mind.  Not Italian.  They would go for French.

His horrified call to the police five hours later when he arrived back at home was a masterpiece, and the subsequent investigation went as he expected.  He was a prime suspect – there had been no way to avoid that – and the detective was convinced he was hiding something.  The revelation of his affair with Joanna (at which he acted ashamed and reluctant to reveal) placated the investigator after he could find no other evidence.

After three months he was no longer a suspect.  That day, he took Joanna to his favorite French restaurant.  A dozen crows wheeled about the place.  There, he admitted to loving her, thanking her for her support after the death of his wife.  She reciprocated, of course, and he continued eating.  The bisque was excellent.

They were married six months later.  The wedding was attended by all of his business associates, Joanna’s distasteful family, and a flock of black birds perched on cars and soaring overhead.

A year to the day after he had strangled his wife to death, Jack Blanco laid in bed next to the new Mrs. Blanco and let himself believe he had gotten away with it.  Everything had gone as planned.  Everything.

Except the crows.

He’d ignored them but they hadn’t gone away.  They sat on his car every morning before he went in to work.  They perched on traffic lights at intersections.  They hopped on the window sill outside his office.

He bought a gun and shot one outside the suburban house he lived in with Joanna.  It fell like a sack of feather and he left its body to warn the others.  Joanna, six months pregnant, asked him what the noise had been.  He told her a car had backfired.

The next morning, the body was gone, and a legion of crows filled the front lawn in utter silence.  They formed a bubble for him to get to his car, closing back around him as he walked.

Jack mentioned the crows, exactly once, to his new secretary.  She’d looked at him, and then laughed nervously at a joke she didn’t understand from her boss.

Joanna gave birth to a little girl, and the crows appeared in house.  They watched him from doorjambs and the kitchen table.  They flapped inside cabinets while he poured coffee.  He opened the refrigerator one day and a flock of them poured out.

His co-workers started giving him strange looks, crows sitting on their shoulders.  Joanna asked him if he was well, often, his daughter in her arms and a crow on her head.  His boss suggested he take a sabbatical and spend it with his family.

Jack took a leave from work, but Joanna went to stay with her mother a few days later, lying about why she did so, leaving Jack alone with the crows in the house.  Raven black, they followed him everywhere.  They were silent, now, watching.

He considered.  Pills?  Too long.  The garage?  Undignified.  His gun?  Yes.

He opened his bedside drawer, and on top of his pistol there was a single crow feather, a piano wire wrapped around it.  Standing there, Jack Blanco started to laugh, and never stopped.

Joanna later told her friends, after Jack had been committed, that she thought he’d never really gotten over the death of his first wife.  Wearing diamonds on her fingers and gold in her hair his money had bought her, she sorrowfully recounted how his mind was broken and he’d never get out of the asylum.

When Jack Blanco died, ten years later, he was buried in the too-large cemetery behind the asylum.  As two orderlies in white covered his rough pine coffin with dirt, a crow perched on every tombstone.  The orderlies tamped the dirt flat, and the crows – a murder of crows – took flight.

To See But Not Be Seen
By Tom Schellhase

“Where to hide, where to hide…” I run down Sunset Drive. Finally, I am able to stop and catch my breath. Then I see the UVD, the “unmanned video drone.” I have been running for so long that I almost can’t move, but as one of the cameras swivels my direction, I force myself to duck behind an abandoned Toyota Corolla. The UVD continues on down the street but I realize it was a horrible idea to go down this street. It would never be safe. I need a way to get out fast. I just wish I had a way to leave so fast that the UVD wouldn’t be able to react…

Just as I had hoped, the keys are still in the Corolla’s ignition. The car is stubborn after sitting idle for over 15 years, but starts eventually. The UVD turns in the direction that it “heard” the noise come from, but I am already around the corner, having shut off the engine so I am just coasting down the next street.

My name is Tom and I am 28 years old. In 2014, something called the Second Great Depression hit, and the Shoppe Brothers Co., currently the world’s largest corporation that owns everything in the U.S. from the Mall of America to the Pick n’ Save down the street, overthrew the government of the U.S. and took control of everything imaginable. Then Shoppe Brothers put up cameras everywhere, and put cameras, locator chips, and microphones in our cell phones. Anyone who tried to rebel was either put in prison, or even killed on sight. They treated us as slaves. In two years, our population was cut in half, and now, 15 years from The Overthrow (as we call it), I am still in one of the many feared underground rebel groups that try to make things difficult for “The Big Brothers.” That’s the nickname that Americans gave to the Shoppe brothers. I have just finished a mission to blow up a train carrying $14 million worth of gold that was being shipped to one of The Big Brothers’ banks.  As I said, we make life difficult for them. We live our normal crummy lives, but in our free time we carry out missions against The Big Bro’s. The one crucial thing about our guerrilla attacks is that we don’t get recognized. We need to see but not be seen.

When I get back to HQ, located on the site that used to be the Merrill Hills Country Club, I return the gold that I stole to the boss, head home, and call it a day. The next day, my mission is to blow up the checkpoint at the border of Waukesha and Milwaukee so that the truck full of our militia storm team can launch a full out assault on the Wisconsin branch of the Shoppe Brothers Co., and prepare for the assassination of The Big Brothers. As I travel north off of Sunset Drive, the patrol thugs keep giving me distrustful looks. I start to wonder if the UVD got a look at me before I spotted it.

After these unsettling thoughts, I try my best to blend into the large group of commuters. Once I’m in the city, I duck into the old Sprizzo’s Restaurant when I see one of the guards watching me. I run through the kitchen out back, but unfortunately, even in the dirty abandoned kitchen of an abandoned restaurant, there is still a camera in the corner. I run to the alley behind it and jump into the tall weeds.  The weeds cover me enough so I can’t be seen, so I pull out my brand-new phone, rip out the surveillance chip, and call in the modified Chevy Suburban (we’d taken the surveillance devices out) to my location. Five minutes later the maroon truck pulls up.  I watch as the driver gets out and walks away without noticing me. I run up and jump through the window and drive away as fast as I can. Just as planned, there is a fake uniform on the passenger seat.

“Nice jump.” I jump out of my skin, barely controlling the urge to start screaming bloody murder. I whirl around ready to confront the attacker, only to find Megan, our techy. I had forgoten that she would be on this mission with me.

“Yeesh Megan, you scared me to death!”

“Thank you,” she says with a sly smile, “I do try.”

“Ha ha. Very funny. You want to get to work now?” Her job is to fuse the bomb. We are about three minutes away from the checkpoint and we pull over so I can change and so Megan can shove herself into a supply locker.  She puts the bomb in her lap. When we’re ready, we get back into the car and drive to the checkpoint…

Epilogue
On August 18, two “unknown individuals” blew up a checkpoint in between Milwaukee and Waukesha. Minutes later, thirteen various large semi trucks came through, according to witnesses, and didn’t stop until they came to the building of the Wisconsin HQ for the Shoppe Brothers. They launched a full-scale assault and overthrew it, taking all the weapons there with them.

Three days later, Jacob and Daniel Shoppe were killed in their mansion at five o’clock AM. This encouraged rebels all over the US to overthrow their states’ branches and soon all of the Shoppe Brothers Co. was gone, making way for previous political officials to form a new government, restoring order and removing almost all cameras from public buildings and streets.

Who is Watching You?

The world George Orwell created in his classic novel, 1984, offers few places to hide. Create your own fictional masterpiece, 1,000 words or less, based on the theme “Who is Watching You?” and you could be a winner!

The contest is open to middle school and high school students and adults.

All entries are due Monday, October 8.

Get all the contest details and an official Entry Form and get creative!