Academics — Academic Departments — Language and Literature — Short Fiction Contest

Bucks County Short Fiction Contest

Short Fiction Contest 2021

NEWTOWN -- The Bucks County Short Fiction Contest is pleased to announce the winners for Fall 2021. Lynn Levin of Southampton won first place for her story, “Tell Us About Your Experience.” Megan Monforte of Doylestown was awarded second place for her story, “Dear Mrs. Stover.” Jennifer Giacalone, also of Doylestown, placed third for her story, “Wrestling with Dust.” Novelist Megan Angelo, author of the novel Followers, made the final selection. She also awarded Honorable Mention to Gabriel Tenaglia of Langhorne, for his story, “The Everything Room.”

A celebration will be held online, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 17. We will be joined by the final judge, Megan Angelo, author of the novel Followers, published by Graydon House Books in 2020. and a native of Quakertown. Her writing has also appeared in publications including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Glamour, Slate, and the Huffington Post. She is a native of Quakertown. During the event, the winners will read briefly from their stories, and be interviewed about their writing processes. Angelo will join us as well, to discuss her writing life. The public can access the event by watching on the College’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/buckscountycommunitycollege.

This event receives support from the Department of Language and Literature.

For further information, contact the contest coordinator, Professor Elizabeth Luciano, at Elizabeth.Luciano@bucks.edu.

"Tell Us About Your Experience"

Lynn Levin

First place winner, Lynn Levin of Southampton.

Of “Tell Us About Your Experience,” Angelo wrote, “I will never look at a survey window (right before I x it out) the same again! This story is a gem, packed with detail, rhythm and comedy. The writer creates a specific, captivating protagonist and beats out a nuanced but persistent rallying cry, all in eight pages. A tribute to that "man seen from a distance" we all know so well—or don't—and a timely snapshot of how our quest to make everything better sometimes just makes things worse.”

"Tell Us About Your Experience" - Full Story

Tell Us about Your Experience

Jim Gulliford, wearing a white shirt and a slightly frayed blue tie, signed onto his computer at Union Analytics. As usual, surveys swarmed his inbox, all due ASAP: a Qualtrics about yesterday’s meeting, a Doodle poll about the next meeting, a performance review for the new intern, an obligatory eval of an outside vendor with two dozen questions—this one even demanded that everyone rate the layout of report, the background colors, and the size and font of the type. Every time Gulliford hit save, the vendor survey crashed, forcing him to start all over again.

Thirty-six and single, Jim had the face of a man seen from a distance, the face of a man in a crowd. Bartenders overlooked him. When raising his hand at meetings, he was ignored. On the plus side, because he blended in, panhandlers left him alone, and he could tailgate after others at keycard access doors. One of several data entry techs at Union, Gulliford spent his days in his cubicle, hands to keyboard, nose to screen, pumping numbers to analysts, who sat at nicer desks on better chairs and earned enough to buy themselves condos.

With all the busy work and make-work of surveys, when did the company expect him do his job, which this week was logging in data about the sales of men’s socks? No-show socks, athletic socks, mid-calf socks, and over-the-calf socks, with notably few sales for the over-the-calf kind. Then on to sock materials, then the styles: solids, bold solids, stripes, argyles, novelty patterns, and such. Really, quite a lot to men’s socks. He glanced down at his own socks, which were gathering around his ankles on their way to bunching under his heels.

These days, you couldn’t buy a bottle of booze or ask to have your modem reset without some wheedling robot pecking at you for praise: “Tell us about your experience,” “Take a few minutes to help us serve you better,” “Rate your satisfaction,” “Write a review, “How are we doing?” And forget anonymous. Once Gulliford gave his banker an unsatisfactory review, and the next day the guy phoned to guilt him for costing him a bonus. This very morning, his cell phone lit up with a text message, but it wasn’t from the woman he’d met at the singles volleyball meet-up. It was Frank’s Service Center wanting to know how he felt about the repair they’d done on his vacuum cleaner. He respected (or maybe feared) the imperative and the interrogative, and he had an odd sense that the survey powers, like street cameras, were watching him. Therefore, he followed orders. Also, he liked to be helpful. There was that. Still, as he did his duty and filled out the surveys, he sometimes hated himself for wasting his time, his intellect, his freedom.

The hushed music of the office—soft clicks of typing and the fragments of muffled conversation— kept up its steady cadence. Barging into this came growls from Jim’s stomach. No time to fix his breakfast today. Answering the vacuum cleaner repair survey sucked up all his time. He had to dash into a quick mart next to the office to pick up breakfast. As he toiled at the morning’s surveys (sometimes ten meant worst, sometimes ten meant best), his Danish sweated in its cellophane, and his coffee, which was end-of-the-pot sludge to begin with, cooled to tar. Starving, his concentration interrupted by his gurgling gut, Gulliford plugged away at the latest time-sensitive survey, hoping eventually to get around to the Danish and the hosiery project. He glanced lovingly at the framed photo of Amber, his cat. She shed quite a bit, so the vacuum repair meant a lot to him.

As he selected the radio buttons, typed in his comments, and advanced through the screens, Jim’s brain wandered to the more pleasant subject of socks. He wondered if the client, the American Consortium of Hosiery Informatics, had annual conventions where everyone showed off their socks. Did the companies have parties, and did they call them sock hops? Did they have holiday celebrations with contests for the best-decorated Christmas stockings? And did they have a podiatrist on retainer?

An email alert chimed: the deadline for the socks data was 3:30 p.m., which he very well knew, and he suspected that he might have to skip lunch in order to finish his project. He hadn’t even had time to try the unappetizing Danish. Was it to be a day of fasting? A person could waste away.

After finishing the first three surveys, some imp inside Gulliford made him close the outside vendor survey (it was his third go) and delete the email that sent it. What a jolt he got hitting the delete key. He felt himself launched into a foreign space, exciting, scary, and free. Would management notice his rebellion? Would they even care? He thought about the watchful survey powers, then glanced at Amber, who gave him a supportive look.

Jim felt self-conscious about his sagging socks. He bent down to hike them up, frayed tie dangling.

Wham! His dipping motion upset the mechanism of his chair. The seat plunged. Something under the chair snatched the end of his tie and snagged him in a stranglehold.

Struggling for air, unable to speak, Jim gagged out arggh and then a tracheal uhhh uhhh. He smacked his desk and choked out a few muffled cries. With his waning strength, he again smacked the top of his desk.

“All good?” chirped Lora, the admin, from the other side of the partition. “What’s all the racket?”

No, he wasn’t all good. He was all bad. All dying. Uhhh uhhh, he tried the tracheal sound again. Life force ebbing, he clutched his tie and tipped himself all the way over so as to crash to the floor and make more noise. He lay on his side struggling for air, trying to skootch toward the chair to give his noose some slack.

“Good God,” shrieked Lora, who came running with scissors and saved his life by cutting his tie in half. Jim rolled over gasping, the amputated neckwear lolling like a blue tongue in the chair works. His coworkers gathered around as he tried to catch his breath. Jeff from IT unbuttoned Gulliford’s shirt collar, unknotted his tie, and chucked the garrote in the trash.

Jim didn’t want to cry, but he felt like crying. Still gasping and hoarse from the trauma, he coughed his heartfelt thanks to Lora and Jeff. Now, there were two people who deserved great evals. He was amazed that Lora, whom he took for a dimwit, came running with scissors, which in this case was a totally genius thing to do. How life did surprise. Imagine dying in the office strangled by your tie. So different from wasting away in a cheap nursing home as he expected to do. Gulliford managed to stagger away from the chair, which he thought might snap at him again. Then he looked down at his troublemaking socks. What was that old saying, for the want of a horseshoe nail? He realized, as never before, the importance of quality men’s hosiery. Jeff helped him to a spare chair, a traditional one, without mechanics. Someone brought over a cup of water.

Presently, Bronwen from HR came by. She had dark red nail polish with a white flourish on one of her nails. Jim hated her. She gazed at him with a prosecutor’s eye, not a shred of sympathy or human kindness in her. She posed most of her questions in the negative. He wasn’t injured was he? He didn’t need to go to the hospital did he? He could tell that she wanted to dodge a worker’s comp claim or trouble with OSHA. He doubted that she would ask operations to buy a new chair or talk to legal about suing the chair company or do whatever companies did when a guy nearly got killed by a piece of office furniture. She called someone to help Gulliford find a new cubicle. The chair lay on the floor like a somnolent bull. Gulliford rubbed his sore neck.

It was now noon. His near brush with death had swept away his appetite. He wished to return to the Zen of inputting sock data.

Then came a new round of surveys, a dragnet of them, chasing him down: “Rate your experience with HR,” “Share your opinion of the Hands-Free Swivel Chair,” “Tell us about your incident,” “Teamwork and you: just a few questions.” Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete. Trashing the surveys didn’t give him the buzz he got before. Now when he hit the key, it was like a counterpunch. Three-thirty rolled around, his project nowhere near complete. An email came in, reminding him of the deadline. A hunger headache and a woozy feeling, low blood sugar he supposed, made it harder to concentrate, but he forged ahead with the socks project and left the office at 6:50 p.m. with still more work to do on the socks. Dragging himself from the bus to his apartment, he greeted Amber, freshened up her food, and, trembling from hunger, opened a can of tuna for himself.

The next day at work, the same incident questionnaires cluttered his inbox, this time with “high importance” tacked onto their subject lines. Again, he deleted each one. Whether this was passive resistance or passive aggression or the stubbornness of the imp, he didn’t know, but he didn’t love his rebellion as much as he did before. He didn’t want to lose his job. He only wanted to do his job. He worked through lunch, inputting the socks data. His stomach gurgling. Once more, his job was starving him.

Bronwen materialized before him, gesturing with her flourished fingernail to his computer screen. “Jim, there seems to be some miscommunication. Yesterday, I sent you a number of questionnaires regarding your mishap. And today I resent them with high importance. You must complete them.”

“I decline,” said Jim, his stomach growling. Bronwen looked at him as if he came from outer space.

She began again, “You understand, Jim, that this is normal business practice. When you receive emails from management, you must respond to them.”

“I decline to answer the surveys,” Jim replied with a blank look. He reached down to hitch up his socks, another recalcitrant pair. “I have work to do.”

“What I am trying to tell you,” she said in a severe voice, “is that you are obliged, that means you are required, to respond to the surveys.”

“I decline,” he said. Bronwen’s eyes grew so wide that he could see the whites all around.

“As I said, this is not an offer you can decline. You don’t have options. This company cannot operate with everyone doing willy-nilly what they please.”

“I only wish to enter data,” said Gulliford. “I decline to answer the surveys.”

“Suit yourself then,” she replied. Five minutes later, she zipped him an email that shouted, “TOP PRIORITY.” He was now on probation. Also, he had finished the socks project and was now nostalgic for it. The present project dealt with furnace filters.

Three days later, he was summoned to a noontime meeting. Bronwen was there and so were the head of HR, the Chief Operations Officer, and Scott, the manager of the data entry technicians. Sitting in the corner, was a security man, dressed all in gray. Jim eyed the men’s socks. Nothing really spectacular, but nothing saggy either. Black and navy mid-calfs judging from the good shin coverage. White athletic socks on the security guy.

“Funny, I hadn’t noticed you before,” said the COO, who went on to note that Gulliford’s work was reported to be accurate, but that he’d missed a recent deadline, and procedures were procedures and noncompliance was noncompliance, and he had to respond to the surveys.

“Why don’t you just fill in the surveys, Jim?” asked Scott.

“I decline to do that,” replied Jim. He was in a pattern now, a kind of loop that he could not break.

“We don’t want to lose you,” said Scott.

Gulliford did not answer, but his stomach growled. Again, Union was forcing him to skip lunch. The steam had gone out of his rebellion, and yet he found it impossible to yield.

“Then will you resign? Or will you decline that too?” said Bronwen. Her boss shot her a look.

“You leave us no other option than to terminate you,” said the head of HR with a look of pity and regret.

The security guard escorted Jim to his cubicle to collect his personal effects. His only personal effect was the photo of Amber. He told Jim to hand over his company ID and keycard. As they walked through the office, some coworkers turned their heads away, but Lora and Jeff looked on with sad faces. As the security man ushered Jim to the door, he said, “Don’t you want to keep your job? How are you going to eat? What’s up with you, man?”

The next morning, Jim Gulliford rode the bus to work as always. He tailgated behind someone with a keycard. He stopped to use the men’s room and made his way to his cubicle amid a wave of confused stares. In his chair, he found a stranger, a guy in his twenties who said, “Hi, I’m Dewey. This is where they told me I sit, isn’t that right?”

The security man approached Jim, his face tight as a knot. Trailing after him was a policeman. The cop tied Jim’s wrists in plastic cuffs and perp-walked him down the row of cubicles, all silent now, no typing sounds, no conversations. The cop drove him to the police station, but no one charged him with anything. They cut off his plastic cuffs and let him loose into the city.

Jim Gulliford had no plans except for the immediate, which was lunch. Spying a deli, he sat down at the counter and ordered himself a Reuben with extra cole slaw on the side and a 7Up. The Reuben was delicious. He savored every bit. The waitress left a survey with his check. He had plenty of time to do the survey, but he left it untouched on the table. Then he strolled into a department store and bought himself three pairs of novelty socks: one with blue and red diamonds, one with sandwiches, and another with cats. Naturally, the sales receipt asked him to rate his purchase.

Gulliford took off his shoes, pulled off his old socks, and changed into the pair with the cats. Then he walked out into the city, his belly full and his feet at peace. He must have been smiling as a few passersby caught his eye and with approving looks nodded his way.

"Dear Mrs. Stover"

Megan Monforte

Second place winner, Megan Monforte of Doylestown.

The judge lauded “Dear Mrs. Stover” by remarking that the story “…had such a propulsive structure. I loved toggling between the emails and the action on the beach. The language in the emails was so thoughtful in its restraint, tone and progression, and the staging of the (non)proposal scene was elegantly done. It's hard, in a short story format, to make one chance encounter feel impactful enough to change the course of a character's life—this story manages to do that for two chance encounters. Very impressive.”

"Dear Mrs. Stover" - Full Story

Dear Mrs. Stover

The first message was lost in a sea of other back-to-school messages that had flooded Laurie’s in-box late last August. She went back looking for it recently and was surprised to see how ordinary it was. She had expected a spark, a clue, a subtle hint of romance or flirtation.

Dear Mrs. Stover,

Thank you for the enlightening message regarding your son, Cameron. I appreciate the time and effort required to tell me more about his interests and personality. I look forward to meeting him on the first day of school. Third grade is a big and important year for learning at White Pine Elementary, but we’ll have plenty of fun, too. I hope to meet you and Mr. Stover at

Back-to-School Night, which is on September 14th at 7 o’clock, Room Six. Thank you again.

Sincerely, Mark Davis

Bland and nondescript, probably the same email he sent to all the parents, simply changing the names each time. She then checked her sent mail folder to see if she’d responded. Who could remember at this point?

Dear Mr. Davis,

Please feel free to call me Laurie, as the only Mrs. Stover in my life is my mother-in-law. After fourteen years of marriage, I still don’t think of myself as Mrs. Stover. I don’t think I ever will. I ask all of Cam’s friends to call me Laurie. So please feel free to do the same. I look forward to meeting you as well.

It made her cringe. What kind of person wrote such things to her child’s teacher, whom that person hadn’t even met yet? A pathetic one, that’s what kind. Still, he’d responded two days later.

Dear Mrs. Stover,

Thank you for your message. It’s been my policy since I became a teacher 21 years ago to address all parents this way. I know it’s formal, but if it makes you feel better, I know your mother-in-law and there are worse individuals to share a name with.

Then he’d added a smiley face, followed by Sincerely, Mark Davis.

Immediately she’d gone to the school’s website and looked him up. Light brown hair, hard to tell his eye color from the photo, which looked like it was from last year’s yearbook, and a wide smile that seemed easy and genuine.

“Pathetic,” Laurie whispered now, into her knees, though she wasn’t sure if she was referring to herself or Mr. Davis. “Both,” she whispered, again into her knees. She was sitting on the cold sand of Colony Beach on an old bath towel she’d found in the trunk of her car. It was warm for May in Kennebunkport, but windy by the water, and she’d left home without her parka and was shivering in her sweatshirt.

She hadn’t told Douglas she was leaving. She hadn’t known where she was going at first.

She certainly had no idea what she was doing. She just needed to leave the house. She needed to leave Ellsworth, too. Once she’d been on the turnpike a few miles, she knew her destination.

This beach was her favorite in Kennebunkport, maybe all of Maine, always quiet and less crowded than the others. She’d come here nearly every summer as a kid, because her mother’s sister had a house on Haverhill Street. She and her cousins would ride bikes to the beach, when she was even younger than Cam, and spend all day swimming, squatting in tide pools looking for sea life, reading on their towels and then riding up Ocean Avenue to get an ice cream from Uncle Jed’s General Store before heading home.

Douglas would sigh if he knew she was here, deeply and in a way that conveyed his utter lack of surprise to be disappointed by her again. She squeezed her eyes tightly now, trying not to see his face in her mind. She saw Cam’s for a moment, and felt a quick twist of guilt, but he had a ride to soccer, and hopefully he’d get a ride home. They’d have to figure it out without her this time.

“Good luck,” she whispered.

Dear Mr. Davis,

It seems I’ve been chosen as your classroom parent this year. I was asked by the Home and School ladies to get in touch and see how I can be helpful. I’ve never done this before, so please bear with me as I figure it out. Is it too early to begin planning the third grade Halloween party? Also, it was a pleasure meeting you on Back-to-School Night. Normally these things are overwhelming or boring, but your presentation was funny, interesting and (best of all) not too long. Cam is already enjoying having you as a teacher.

My best,

Laurie Stover

She’d started signing her emails with her full name, as a nod to his preference for formality. She’d also started asking Cam more questions about his time in the classroom. She’d discovered that Mr. Davis shook hands with each student as they arrived in the mornings, and high-fived each student when the day was over.

“We have to make eye contact with him, because he says that’s good eck-a-tick.” “Etiquette,” she corrected. “And it is.”

Mr. Davis also wore a tie and a blazer every day, unlike the other male teachers at school, who seemed to dress more like football coaches. Mr. Davis had elbow patches on at least one of his blazers, which Laurie had noticed on Back-to-School Night. She found it both cliché and captivating, which embarrassed her. Her cheeks were flushed as she sat at Cam’s desk amongst the other parents. Back at home, Douglas had asked her if she was feeling unwell.

“You have no idea,” she muttered now, into her knees, on the beach. “Excuse me.”

Laurie looked up and saw a woman, older than her but not as old as her mother-in-law, standing nearby. She was in a white baseball cap with dark curly hair stuffed through the opening at the back of it, and an oversized zip-front hoodie that said Bowdoin across the front in block letters. Around her neck on a black strap was a camera, a nice one, a real one, which reminded Laurie of the kind she had, on a shelf in some closet at home.

“Excuse me,” the woman said again, “I’m sorry to bother you, but—do you know how to work this?” She gestured to the camera. “My daughter is about to get engaged out there, and the photographer my son-in-law hired couldn’t make it at the last minute so he asked me to take the pictures. I changed my clothes and put on this getup”—she gestured in a wide circle to her hat and sweatshirt—“but I’m almost sure my daughter’s recognized me and I really don’t want to ruin this for her.”

It took Laurie a moment to process the details, but eventually she made out a pair of silhouettes on the jetty wall, which separated the beach from the Kennebunk River. They were nearly at the end, and the sun was already starting its downward slide and oh, what a lovely spot for a proposal. Her eyes stung and she felt fiercely envious of this woman’s daughter, starting from scratch, a beautiful clean slate, filled with love and expectation and the completely delusional belief that her happy ever after was guaranteed.

“So can you? I’m sorry, I hate asking, but I think he’s going to do it any second and I’ll be on the shitlist if I miss it.”

Laurie unwrapped her arms from her knees and got herself to standing. The woman had taken the camera off her neck and was shifting from one foot to the other, glancing at the jetty and then back to Laurie.

“I used to walk out there all the time when I was young,” Laurie told her, “but I don’t know how I feel about doing it with your expensive camera. While trying to be inconspicuous. I’m not even sure I know how to work that thing.”

“Do you have a camera phone? I don’t care if you take the photos with that. I’ll give you my number. You can text them to me.” The woman’s eyes were full of anguish, Laurie could see, even with the baseball hat’s brim casting shadows across her face.

Laurie reached into the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt and found her phone, which she’d turned off as soon as she’d made it out of Ellsworth. She pressed the power button and looked out at the end of the jetty. A few young kids with buckets were making their way toward the couple, which would surely throw at least a momentary wrench into the lovers’ plans.

“Yeah, I can do it,” Laurie said, just as her phone buzzed. She glanced down. A dozen text notifications. The most recent one was from Douglas: “Where ARE you, Laurie? I got a call from Cam’s soccer coach to come pick him up, because he was just sitting at the field alone.

WHERE DID YOU GO? Are you even ALIVE?”

Dear Mrs. Stover,

Thank you again for planning a delightful Halloween party for the class. The students had a wonderful time—the mystery boxes were a big hit, especially the spaghetti “brains” and peeled tomato “heart.” You clearly put considerable time and effort into planning and it means a lot not just to the students, but to me as well. Thank you again. I am sure we will see each other soon. I look forward to it.

Sincerely, Mark Davis

Dear Mr. Davis,

Knowing that I—a 37-year-old mother—grossed out an entire classroom of nine-year-olds is something I will treasure forever, and perhaps even add to my resume. It was my pleasure to handle the party. I’m already starting to think about what to do for the holidays. It will take some real magic to top the “brains.” I look forward to seeing you again soon as well.

My best,

Laurie Stover

After a few harried instructions from the nervous mother, whose name Laurie still didn’t know—she’d added her to her phone contacts as “Proposal Mom”—Laurie climbed onto the jetty and began her walk out to the end. She was in her sneakers and wished she’d thought to take them off. She’d only ever navigated these rocks in her bare feet, and that had been a couple decades ago. But there was no time to stop. The couple was sitting way out on the jetty now, facing the sun and a sky full of cottony cloud wisps stretching up from the horizon. It was nearly golden hour, a term Laurie had learned from the photographer who’d taken pictures of her and Douglas and Cam six years ago, when life had been different.

Those photos still hung in the hallway at the top of the stairs. Three different poses on the rocks at Little Hunters Beach in Acadia. In what had been her favorite, she and Douglas were standing close and gazing at each other, big smiles about to crack into laughter, while little Cam was in her arms and twisting around to look up at his parents. One of his chubby starfish hands was on Laurie’s cheek. She passed it on the wall about 67 times a day and couldn’t bring herself to look at it.

A schooner was approaching the inlet at a good clip. Laurie stopped to watch it navigate the jetty and make its way down the river toward the docks. She noticed the couple watching it too, as well as the kids with their buckets. It glided by with ease and confidence. The folks on the decks were laughing and oblivious to their audience.

The farther out she went, the less smooth the rocks were and Laurie decided this was actually a terrible place for an engagement. What if the proposal went off as planned, but the bride-to-be, in all her excitement, slipped and cracked her head on her way back inland? Or fell into the water and couldn’t swim? Or got hit by a schooner?

“Idiots,” she muttered, focusing on her sneakers and trying to find dry spots to step on.

Engagements used to be simpler, she was sure. Then again, Douglas had proposed on Christmas Eve in front of his family by hanging the ring—gold band, tiny but glittering diamond—on his parents’ tree. Her mother-in-law, Bertie, was the only one not shrieking with glee or slapping Douglas on the back after Laurie had said yes. She remembered glancing up and then holding Bertie’s gaze as her future mother-in-law stood in the kitchen doorway, clutching a dishtowel. Bertie was unsmiling, which was disconcerting in the moment, but Laurie thought she understood now. Make sure you know what you’re in for, Laurie imagined she’d been trying to convey. But of course there was no way to know until you were already in it.

“I’m sorry, I just need to—”

Laurie gasped and picked her head up in time to see a kid—a man, technically, but he looked half her age—approaching on the rocks from the opposite direction. He was in jeans that seemed as if they’d been ironed and a navy blue crewneck sweater with a collared shirt underneath. He had a small blanket rolled up and tucked under his arm and a twisted, urgent look on his face.

Laurie moved over a few inches so he could pass, then looked out toward the end of the jetty. She could see the intentioned bride in more detail now, on her feet and staring inland, in her direction.

“Uh oh,” she muttered.

Dear Mrs. Stover,

I hope you enjoyed a restful and fun holiday break. Cam didn’t share many details about his time off, but I suspect he’s just not thrilled to be back at school already, like most of his classmates! Anyway, if it’s not too much trouble for you to send a message out to the other parents, we are running low on cleaning wipes and tissues. It’s the time of year when those things become even more essential, so any contribution will be very much appreciated. Also, it's a little early, I know, but I wanted to put on your radar that we’ll be having a Valentine’s Day party next month. We can discuss any ideas you might have at your convenience.

Sincerely, Mark Davis

Dear Mr. Davis,

You are a perceptive teacher. In fact, Cam did not have a wonderful Christmas. His father and I are not getting along very well these days because he is consumed by his job and has forgotten the rest of his life. I am overwhelmed, resentful, and profoundly sad. Despite my best efforts, I could not make the holidays pleasant nor peaceful for my son. I am a failure as a mother, wife and human being. Christmastime used to be my favorite season—did you know Cam’s dad proposed to me on Christmas Eve? He thought I would find it romantic, and special, and I suppose a part of me did, but a bigger part of me found it uninspired and lame. Two words that, ironically, describe the current state of my life. This will sound absolutely unhinged, but your emails, in all their stolid glory, have become a lifeline for me. I don’t really understand why, but please keep writing. Also, of course I will put the call out for cleaning wipes and tissues.

That one had stayed in her drafts folder, but it felt good—bold, dangerous—to type the words, to see them in the open, to admit how bad she was feeling. So good, in fact, that she’d come very close to hitting “send.”

Her phone buzzed again in her pocket. With a sigh, she dug it out, expecting to see another all-caps message from Douglas, but the hastily-typed words were from Proposal Mom.

“SIL just walked by, said has to use bathroom, but I think s’thing wrong.”

Laurie glanced over her shoulder and saw the woman who sent her on this haphazard mission standing in the same place on the jetty at the shoreline, baseball cap still on, hands clasped under her chin.

Not far up ahead, her daughter—whose name was also a mystery to Laurie—was standing in a similar position, hands clutched at her chest, looking out again toward the sun. Laurie could see now that this girl was in a pretty floral dress that fell below her knees with a long thick cardigan sweater wrapped around her. In her hands was a pair of sandals. They looked strappy and fancy and not at all appropriate for walking a jetty. With her long, dark hair blowing behind her and the set of her shoulders—up and back, no hunching or slouching—she looked ready for a photo shoot. A real one, not a highfalutin kind set up in secret by her mother and husband-to-be. Laurie took a moment to square her own shoulders, because she was always tight and just a little bent over, as if her body had gotten the message somewhere along the way that making itself smaller was the best defense.

The girl turned her head and looked at Laurie. The skin around her eyes was red and blotchy. “Hi,” Laurie said, realizing she hadn’t come up with a plan for how to take the pictures she

needed to take, or a cover story. “Beautiful afternoon, eh? But you must be freezing. I’m freezing.”

The girl gave her a half-smile. Laurie was startled by how young she looked. Not a line on her face, her skin was so pink and brand-new. “Ayuh, I’m not dressed for the beach.”

“Same,” admitted Laurie, looking down at her sweatshirt and one of the two pairs of jeans she wore in rotation these days. “I didn't know I was coming here today.”

“Me either!” the girl said, seemingly relieved to have found a kindred spirit. “My boyfriend—” Here she looked inland, where SIL had gone to find the bathroom (or maybe not), and let out a breath. “I thought we were just having dinner, maybe drinks first on the patio.” She nodded her head toward something over Laurie’s shoulder, which Laurie knew was Dockside Inn, across the road and up the hill. It had been there when she was a kid and apparently was still a place to go.

“But you wound up on the jetty?”

“Well…” The girl looked toward the sun again. “Mark suggested we take a walk and—” “Mark?” Laurie’s voice came out too loud. Her chest buzzed with awareness. She was a

It wasn’t her Mark. That Mark wasn’t even her Mark. She shut her eyes and shook her head quickly. “Mark is...your boyfriend?”

“He is,” the girl sighed. “He was acting weird and all stressed out the last few days. He’s normally pretty calm, so I thought something was wrong, but then he planned this date. And he pulled in by the beach and said we should go sit by the water and...I knew.”

“Knew what?” Laurie was good at playing dumb. It was one of her strengths.

The girl started to cry again. Tears slid down her cheeks in a way that seemed dramatic but authentic. Laurie wished she could cry like that. It was all or nothing for her, mostly nothing.

Even Cam had picked up on it. “Mom, you never cry. Not even at the saddest movie. Are you a robot?”

“He was going to propose to me,” the girl was saying. “And I—I don’t want to get married, not now, not yet, and he knows that, so I have no idea—” The girl quickly swiped at her cheeks. “Why am I telling you this? Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I ruined a proposal and now I’m talking the ear off a stranger. I am just killing it today.”

“Why don’t you want to get married?” Laurie asked. She wanted to sit down and let the girl tell her everything, but Proposal Mom was still watching and Mark could show up at any moment—not her Mark, although if he appeared on the jetty at Colony Beach in Kennebunkport, wouldn’t that be something?

“I love him, but I have plans,” the girl said. “My career, my future. And marriage feels like it would be the end of that. It was for my mom.” A shriek followed by loud laughter made them both look out toward the end of the jetty. “Are those your kids?” the girl asked Laurie, gesturing toward the crew with buckets, who were now scrambling the rocks.

“No, nope, not mine,” Laurie said. “Thankfully.” She forced a chuckle and then there was a pause. “So, is Mark—do you think he’ll be okay?”

The girl stared up at the sky. “He said he was going to see if our table was ready.” After a moment she looked back at Laurie and let out a long exhale. “I know he just wanted to get away from me. As soon as he suggested we sit and watch the sunset, I tried to find ways to—I don’t know—change the subject? Apparently it worked. I didn’t want to say no to his face, but maybe being subtle was worse.”

Laurie stared at the girl, in awe of how self-contained she was. She guessed the girl was twenty-something and when Laurie was twenty-something, she had no concept of who she was or what she was capable of. Saying ‘no’ to a marriage proposal from a man she thought she loved wouldn’t have crossed her mind. She wouldn’t have known it was an option.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to keep you from whatever it is you’re—you know, doing out here right now.”

“Oh.” Laurie had almost forgotten the girl didn’t know. She looked back over her shoulder.

Proposal Mom was swaying from one foot to the other, camera now slung over one shoulder, staring their way. “I’m actually here,” Laurie said slowly, and then turned to face the girl, “to take pictures of the proposal that isn’t going to happen. I guess.”

She went on to fill in the blanks of the story—the missing photographer, the encounter she’d had with the girl’s mother. As she listened, the girl covered her mouth with her hand, and her eyes filled again with tears.

“This is the thing,” she eventually said, staring inland past Laurie, “your life is never just your own.” She excused herself then and started to make her way toward her mom. Laurie watched her go, feeling certain she had failed.

Dear Mr. Davis,

I apologize for not being in touch. I heard from Sadie’s mom that the Valentine’s Day party went well. I had to hand the baton to my “assistant” for this one, for personal reasons. I am not sure what other events might happen this spring or how I may be of help to you, but please let me know. I will do my best.

Dear Mrs. Stover,

You were missed at the Valentine’s Day party, though Mrs. Abrams did a fine job. I hope the personal reasons you mentioned are benign. I have noticed Cameron seems quieter than he did at the start of the year. I have simply kept my eye on him, so as not to make him uncomfortable with questions. But if there is anything you think I should know that will help me help him—or you—please don’t hesitate to respond.

Dear Mr. Davis,

How much time do you have?

She’d actually sent that one. Followed immediately by a “just kidding, but here’s what’s happening” message, in which she’d explained that her husband’s recent work promotion meant he was traveling much more often, and when he was not traveling he was at home preparing to travel again, and though the new job came with a raise, which was supposedly the thing that was most important, Cam had been feeling abandoned. I admit I am overwhelmed, she wrote, and perhaps my son is responding to that, in addition to missing his dad. Somehow, I am still surprised by the knack life has for turning upside down without warning. My dad always told me to hope for the best but expect the worst. This is probably what he meant.

Laurie did not want to leave the jetty. The sun was hovering at the horizon and had turned the wispy clouds shades of peach and gray. On the shore, she could see Proposal Mom and her daughter with their heads close together. No sign of the groom. Laurie had no plan other than a three-hour drive back home. “I hate driving in the dark,” she muttered, and with a sigh, started a slow walk inland.

Her phone began to buzz again, this time incessantly. She pulled it out of her sweatshirt pocket and saw Douglas’s name and a photo of him and Cam on the screen. Cam was six in the picture and making a silly face while Douglas laughed.

“Hello?” she said, as if she had no idea who was calling.

There was silence on the other end. Laurie pulled her phone away from her head to see if the call had dropped and put it back in time to hear, “Are you with him?” Douglas’s voice was flat. Not loud, not cold, but dull. He’d gone from all caps to fine print.

“Him who?”

“Laurie.”

“No, Douglas,” she managed, as a tightness seized her throat. “I am not.”

Dear Mrs. Stover,

First, thank you for letting me know what might be behind Cam’s reticence in school. I appreciate your candor. I will do my best to support him in the classroom and let him know that I am available if he needs help or someone to talk to. I hope it is not too forward of me to offer you the same. Life transitions are rarely easy, and it sounds like you are in the middle of an especially tricky one. While it’s undoubtedly an excellent career opportunity for Mr. Stover, the effects of his absence can not be underestimated. At the risk of sharing too much, I remember my own mother struggling to raise my sister and me after my father passed away. The situations are not the same, of course, but I have to imagine some of the feelings are similar. Cam is a great kid, which is a reflection of your hard work. I, and the other staff members of White Pine Elementary, are here for you (and Cam) if you need anything. I am certain you deserve the best.

Sincerely, Mark Davis

She sat in the school parking lot one afternoon exactly a week after she received his email. Douglas was in Duluth or Tampa or maybe Kansas City. She’d called the babysitter to say she had a last-minute doctor’s appointment and could she meet Cam at the bus stop? Mr.

Davis—Mark—had emerged from the side doors just after four o’clock, less than an hour after the school day ended. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder and his blazer hooked on his finger over the other. Laurie’s body vibrated with nerves and audacity as she opened her car door and stood up. He saw her immediately—there were only a few other cars in the lot at that point, and no other people—and she saw his expression change from confusion to worry to understanding.

“Mrs. Stover,” he said, when he was only a few yards away. “Is something wrong? Is Cam okay?” She was sure he knew everything was wrong, and that it had nothing to do with Cam.

“I’m sorry I didn’t write back, Mr. Davis,” she said in a voice that felt strained and throaty and somehow separate from her mind. She hadn’t planned what she’d say. She’d been overwhelmed by his message—by the feeling of being seen—and tried to ignore it at first. But then she imagined seeing him, and couldn’t stop imagining seeing him, and now here she was. “I read your email and I just—I wanted to tell you. That I read it.”

This was exactly why she had skipped the Valentine’s Day party. She didn’t trust herself around him. There was nowhere to hide.

“Well,” Mark Davis said when he was in front of her. He folded his blazer over his arm, so the other arm was free, and cleared his throat. “I meant what I wrote.”

There was a humming between them. Laurie could feel it. Had she ever felt it with Douglas? Maybe a different kind, but not this. She couldn’t have. She was a different person than she had been when she and Douglas found each other. Hell, she was a different person than she’d been last week.

The air was springlike, and pale sunlight warmed their shoulders through the still-bare branches of the trees. Birdsong and distant traffic and the thumping of her heart were all Laurie could hear. She stared at Mark Davis’s tie—repp stripes of blue and orange, which weren’t the school colors—and then she felt his hand on her face. It was warm and weathered and smelled faintly of Clorox. As he bent his face down to hers and brushed her mouth with his lips, she breathed the words she’d come to say.

“Thank you.”

“My flight to Columbus leaves at quarter to seven tomorrow morning. Will you be home tonight?” Douglas’s voice was toneless.

“How did you know?” Laurie asked. The wind was kicking up along the water and she pressed her phone hard to her ear.

“It’s not important.”

“What did you see?”

Douglas sighed, but there was no impatience in it. “When you left without telling me, I opened your computer. I thought I would check your calendar, maybe you had an appointment. Your email was open.”

“Oh.”

“Will you be home tonight?” “I think so.”

“I have to be at the airport by five-thirty. I have no idea where you are, but I need you home.”

“I know.”

Then Laurie hung up the phone. She thought about throwing it into the water. For a moment or two, she had such an urge to do it. Instead, she slid it back into her sweatshirt pocket and made her way to the shoreline. Proposal Mom was still there, watching her daughter talking to her Mark in the distance. Behind them, the sunset had become a glorious display of pink and purple. It would have made a perfect backdrop.

“I didn’t get any pictures,” Laurie said. “Obviously. Will they be all right?” “I hope not,” she said, without looking at Laurie.

“What? Why?”

“She’s just a kid.” Proposal Mom pulled the white baseball cap off her head. Her hair puffed up around her face like a lion’s mane and Laurie could see now the lines life had left around her eyes. “I’m 57 and still don’t know how to be married. How are these two gonna make it?”

“What’s your name?” Laurie asked. “Nancy.”

“I hope things work out however they’re supposed to, Nancy. And if there’s ever another proposal, I hope the real photographer shows up. I was not your best choice today.”

Nancy laughed a little. “Thanks anyway. Sorry for wasting your time.”

“Not at all,” Laurie said, as she walked backward toward the parking lot, taking one last look at the water and the beach and the jetty and the sky. “Not at all.”

Dear Mr. Davis,

Thank you for meeting with me yesterday. It was unexpected, in every way. Would it be okay to meet again, at your earliest convenience?

Dear Mrs. Stover, Yes.

"Wrestling with Dust "

Jennifer Giacalone

Third place winner, Jennifer Giacalone of Doylestown.

Angelo cited “Wrestling with Dust” by noting, “This story's setting was so richly drawn—I loved the way the writer found so much wonderful imagery in a place literally known for being walked past. This was a large cast for a short story and the writer did a great job of quickly establishing each player's voice and perspective. I loved seeing the different personal histories the men on the site brought to dealing with the nuns. I was in for all of it from the top, because the opening lines were so strong.”

"Wrestling with Dust" - Full Story

Wrestling With Dust

When the workmen arrive at seven on Monday morning, they find Sister Dolores, in full habit, chained to their bulldozer.

It isn’t the first time, either.

She was here on Friday, too, and stayed in this exact spot for half the day, until Sister Annunciata arrived with a briefcase full of legal arguments. Annunciata had gone to law school before joining the order and though she isn’t a lawyer, she knows how to talk like one. By the time the foreman figured out that her arguments weren’t really sufficient to stop work, the day was more or less over anyway.

“Sister, please,” the foreman complains, his voice tired and gravelly.

“You’ll be paid either way,” Dolores points out. “You have a good union.”

“But we have work to do,” he persists.

She understands. He wants the dignity of actually doing his job.

But Dolores is unmoved. She tugs with a smile at her padlock, telling him she hasn’t got a key. She is twenty-five and has the stamina to do this all day. The half-demolished church looms behind the bulldozer, looking even more ancient than it is.

“It’s been like this since the seventies,” she says. “What’s a day or two longer?”

Cyprus had been a war zone then, and bombs had remade much of the architectural landscape. This old church had stood, a ghost of its former self, for many a year since then.

He lights a cigarette while the workmen grumble behind him.

“Can you spare one of those?” she says, pointing to the cigarette in his mouth.

Clearly exasperated, he hands her one and starts to walk away.

“And a light, if you wouldn’t mind?”

He stops. She smiles beatifically. He lights her cigarette, and walks away, muttering in Greek. Dolores smokes until it’s nearly down to the filter and then tosses it into the dry, cocoa-colored dirt.

At mid-morning, Sister Barbara arrives, wearing jeans, boots, and a fuzzy cardigan, wimple intact. She confides to Dolores that she appreciates the theater of the full habit, but it’s simply not practical for walking around a demolition site. She passes out homemade peanut butter cookies as thick as a child’s fist and dispenses coffee from one of those portable cardboard jugs, disarming the surly workers with her sweet, youthful smile. Her tracks in the dark clay dirt are like a child’s next to theirs.

The workmen go quiet for a while, looking as if Barbara has erased their memories of their own mother’s cookies and supplanted them with these. Dolores could go for one of those biscuit-like transgressions herself; they’re filled with chocolate and peanut butter and Heaven knows what else, and it takes fortitude not to ask for one. But Barbara is the charm offensive, and Dolores the martyr.

Mother Superior had gotten the call on Thursday evening from a young local journalist named Thalia Demetriou, who was wondering if the sisters had seen what was inside the remains of the church about to be bulldozed. And now here they are.

The chain is roughly half an inch thick, knotted several times around one of the bulldozer’s tilt cylinders, the arms that lift its bucket, and then twice around her own waist.

The morning is cool, but around mid-day, the weight of it will start to become a drag in the most literal senses of the word.

Sister Annunciata arrives next, in her charcoal grey suit the same shade as her wimple. Dolores suspects her of having dyed the suit to match. Bespectacled, she makes her way across the dirt with a clipboard and speaks to the foreman in cool, official sounding tones.

“As you can see,” she hears Annunciata saying firmly, “it’s a cease-and-desist order.”

“A cease-and-desist order?” the foreman repeats, staring at her clipboard. “It’s a lunch menu.”

Annunciata’s face is implacable apart from the slightest raised eyebrow. “Is it?”

The sisters are known troublemakers: they have faced police lines at protests, sheltered dissidents. Sister Mary Dominic has been teaching self-defense to women in shelters lately. For good measure, they frequently take their business to the cardinal. Dolores suspects that the only reason they haven’t been excommunicated is Sister Barbara’s cookies.

The journalist, Thalia Demetriou, arrives a little while later. She appears beside Dolores: sandy colored hair poking out from under a hard hat, lips in a permanent smirk, camera around her neck. “Mind if I take a couple?” she asks, as if Dolores could do much about it if she did.

“I’ve seen you before,” Dolores comments, as Thalia Demetriou trains her lens on the spectacle of the chained nun.

“Yeah. I’m kind of a fangirl. If you guys are protesting, I’m all over it.”

“Aspiring nun?”

“Stone cold-atheist,” Thalia says. “I just appreciate how you guys are sticking it to the man.”

Dolores silently blesses the stone-cold atheist and asks her for a smoke, which the girl is all too happy to provide.

“Why did you contact us?” Dolores asks as she contemplates the smoke curling before her.

“As opposed to who?” Thalia responds. “I knew you’d care. I knew you’d do something. And you are.”

Frustrated, one of the other workmen starts the engine of a dump truck, as if it will somehow break the stalemate through the sheer power of its rumbling and growling. The clipped tones of Annunciata’s negotiations are swallowed by the noise. Dolores can see that the demure young nun is shouting to be heard but can’t make out a word of it.

Dolores knows that they will eventually give up and turn it off; the habit insulates her from behavior that another protestor might have no choice but to endure. They’re uncomfortable tormenting a nun. She smiles.

Sister Mary Dominic arrives in time to see Dolores leaning back against the dirty bulldozer’s bucket, sharing a cigarette with the young reporter. She’s in jeans and work boots like Barbara, carrying a large toolbox, and has an empty duffle bag over one shoulder. She leans in and says in Dolores’s ear, “You look like you’re having fun.”

She is. It delights her so much she’s sure it must be wicked. If she pictures herself rendered in stained glass, chained to a bulldozer, in the shadow of a ruined church, it can’t be helped. Her smile is a knife as she says, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Mary Dominic lays eyes on Thalia’s camera. “You,” she commands. “With me.”

Startled, Thalia responds to the authority of the tall, broad-built nun’s command and follows her, bewildered but fascinated.

The foreman protests from the edge of the lot: “You’re not supposed to go back there! It’s not safe! Also, it’s trespassing!”

“So? Call the cops!” Mary Dominic barks over her shoulder as she walks away.

The Cyprus skies are usually like polished turquoise, but today a thick white haze obscures the fuzzy disc of the sun as it ascends. So Dolores can hear the distant mutter of the helicopter’s rotors before she can see it. By the time it becomes visible, it already sounds like artillery fire. As it descends, Dolores decides there’s really only one person it can be.

The dust kicks up from where it lands in the middle of the lot, where the slow-moving apocalypse has been making its way to that last crumbling corner of old church that remains standing. She tastes it, feels it crusting unbidden inside her nose, blowing into her eyes and forcing her to close them. When she opens them, Cardinal Kefalas emerges from the chopper, his sunglasses casting Dolores’s mad reflection back at her, his red cassock stark against the white sky.

He looks like he’s immolating. Dramatic bastard, she thinks, fully aware of the irony of that thought existing in the mind of a nun chained to a bulldozer.

“Sister Dolores,” he scolds as he approaches. “I thought we understood each other.”

“I understood you perfectly,” Dolores replies.

“Then why are you here?” he demands irritably.

“Because you clearly didn’t understand me.” Dolores’s smile is now the one reserved for people she is blessing through clenched teeth.

“I told you that the Church has determined there is nothing else to extract from this site.”

“Yes. And I told you that the path was clear before me.”

The Church’s sense of time moves in decades and centuries, not minutes and hours. It will take a special council ten years to debate whether to change the color of the binding on the liturgy books, only to decide that it will stay the same. This site, having been mostly picked clean by smugglers fifty years ago, has escaped the Church’s notice for decades.

The cardinal tugs ineffectually at the chain around her waist. “Where is the key?”

“I don’t have it.” Mary Dominic has it and will not give it to a soul.

Silence falls at this moment. Dolores can instantly tell that the majority of the workmen on this site may or may not be regular churchgoers, but they definitely attended Catholic school.

Mother Superior has arrived, with her cane and her fierce scarred face, habit fluttering in the breezes, flinty eyes fixed on the cardinal. While none of the workers paid much mind to Kefalas’s arrival, despite his descending from the clouds, at Mother Superior's appearance, they all stop talking, stop moving, and cross themselves.

“What is this?” she demands, gesturing at the completely unnecessary helicopter.

“I was on my way somewhere when I received the call,” he says defensively. Even he is a little afraid of her, despite her being almost a foot shorter.

Kefalas and Mother Superior have an intense back and forth. It’s no longer audible, because someone has started the dump trucks again. It seems they’ve decided that they may not be able to bulldoze, but they can begin other work.

Cookies and sandwiches can only stay the workmen’s hands for so long.

But Dolores doesn’t care. She knows what’s happening now. Inside that last crumbling corner of old church, Dolores can picture in her mind’s eye: Thalia Demetriou, junior reporter, taking photographs while Mary Dominic works. She is painting the tiles with glue, laying linen over the glue, digging into the wall with a chisel and a small hammer.

She can read Kefalas’s red face, his gestures, his jowly frustration. He’s probably saying, The Church has approved this property for demolition!

And the Mother, with her righteous fury coiled like a spring, responding, So then why can’t we do a little demolition by hand before you knock it all down?

Time passes in a strange, elastic way when one is chained to a bulldozer. Dolores shifts her weight from time to time, to allow different parts of her long, lank frame to bear the brunt of the work. She declines a cookie from Barbara because it will make her thirsty, and a bottle of water from Annunciata because it will make her need a bathroom. So for a while it’s Dolores, the vague white disc in the sky, creeping, and the occasional cigarette from a workman. The chain’s weight pulls at her bones, coaxes her toward the cocoa-colored dirt.

Sleek white police cars arrive, with the blue lights on top. The cops get out, and they deflate as they get a look at the scene: scattered workmen, a nun and a cardinal having it out in the middle of the dirt next to a helicopter, and Dolores. These lads in their pale blue summer shirts don’t look like they begin to have the appetite to deal with whatever this is.

But she’s done this sort of thing enough times. She wagers that they have a large set of clippers and plan to cut her chain and then drag her away. Mentally, she prepares for that eventuality.

They go first to the cardinal and Mother Superior, who most likely give them conflicting instructions. The foreman appears next to them and contributes what looks like yet a third set of instructions, or perhaps just complaints. Looking aggrieved and unsure, the officers walk back to their car. One of them produces the large chain-cutter from the trunk, and they approach her.

“Sister,” the young lieutenant says, “I’m told that we’re supposed to give you an opportunity to free yourself and let the men continue to work, or else we’ll have to cut that chain and arrest you.”

“Arrest me?” The absurdity. Does this boy even shave yet? “Is that meant to scare me?”

He shifts uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Sister, please. I went to Catholic school. I don’t want to have to, you know… manhandle a nun.”

Dolores folds her arms. “Then don’t.”

A genuinely pained look crosses his face. “We have to get you off of this thing, though. That’s my job.”

“And this is mine. So it appears we have a problem.”

He rubs at the back of his neck. “Well, do you have a key?”

“I don’t.”

“Well, if I cut this chain, are you going to try to run?”

She gestures at her habit. “In this? How far do you imagine I’d get?”

He looks like he’s got a sense of being trapped, and doesn’t like it, and doesn’t know how to get out. “Well, if we arrest you, are you going to resist?”

He already knows the answer.

“Yes,” comes the voice of Thalia Demetriou. “She is.” She holds up her camera. “This is a really good camera. It’ll capture all the granular details of you guys roughing up a nun.”

He looks ready to cry.

But Thalia is here. And that means that Mary Dominic is too. Dolores cranes her neck around.

Thalia carries the toolbox, and Mary Dominic carries the duffle bag, which looks considerably heavier than it did when they went in --when? Hours ago? Mary Dominic’s arms flex with the effort of carrying it.

“Success?” Dolores asks.

“Yes.”

“Unlock me?”

Mary Dominic shrugs. “I don’t have the key.”

“I’m sure you don’t, wretch.” But Dolores is too tired, and too satisfied, to be angry.

Mary Dominic and Thalia approach her. The other sisters converge as well. Even Kefalas is there, peering over the shoulder of the tiny, fearsome Mother Superior.

“Well?” Dolores says impatiently. “I spent all day in chains for this, let me see.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t like it,” Mary Dominic responds dryly.

But, after shifting the bag around in her arms, she opens it to reveal two linen-wrapped, roughly square bundles. She pulls the linen aside and shows Dolores the fruits of their labor; a saint, a mother, a sword-wielding judge, preserved in mosaic whose edges have only just begun to crumble. A portrait of a mother of the early church.

Barbara traces her fingers over the Greek lettering: “Nephele.”

The monks might have written her out of their scriptures over the centuries, line by line obscuring her role in the story of God and man, but here she stands. She is preserved in tinted tile; mute, but indelible, a quiet monument to the faith of women and the ways in which the Church still rests on their shoulders. Ripped from the wall of a building that the Church was ready to consign to dust.

“Let me take them for the archives,” Kefalas says.

“They were almost archived once already today,” Mother Superior retorts.

The young police lieutenant stares at it in awed confusion. “They were going to destroy her?”

Dolores looks at the young cop. “Do you now see why we did all of this?”

He nods dumbly.

“New plan. Cut me loose and don’t arrest me, and we’ll all be leaving.”

He hesitates.

“Look, if she had the key, she’d unlock me, but she doesn’t. Just cut the chain. Hm?”

And like a good Catholic schoolboy, he gestures to the fellow with the clippers, and the jaws bite into the chain and free her.

The bulldozer at last begins to roll as Kefalas ascends into the hazy sky, as the young cops wander back to their car trying to figure out what just happened, as Dolores and her sisters make their way to the church van whose engine still turns over only by divine providence.

“Who was she?” Thalia asks Dolores as they walk.

“A Greek cloud nymph. Appropriated by the early church in order to ease conversions.”

“Why didn’t the Church think she was important to save?”

“Because history is written by the victors.”

And this may be so, Dolores muses. But its truths are preserved by the diligent, the clever, and those willing to dive into wreckage and wrestle with dust.

"The Everything Room"

Gabriel Tenaglia

Honorable Mention, Gabriel Tenaglia of Langhorne.

Tenaglia’s story was cited as offering “…an incredible authenticity running through every detail of this story, from the family dynamics to the dialogue to the precise descriptions of the home. I really felt for our narrator. And I loved that these characters discussed huge ideas without it feeling like, you know, Two Characters Discussing Huge Ideas. Again, that authenticity kept everything grounded. A story with real heart, and real truth.”

"The Everything Room" - Full Story

The Everything Room

“But he’s come out, right?” I ask, my Smartphone held to my ear. I feel it brush against the side of my head, and pull my hand back; I’d accidentally cut off calls before by tapping the hang-up button, so I’ve been careful not to let it press too forcefully against the side of my head.

There’s a long pause before I get a reply. I hear faint muttering coming from the phone, but I can’t make out the words.

“Mom says not since May, and that was only to pick his laptop up from Best Buy.” That’s worrying. They told me he’d been staying inside ever since the pandemic got in full-swing in our state, but I assumed that meant the entire house, and not the playroom in our basement. I also assumed he was doing it the normal way, where ‘staying inside’ really meant ‘only going out for groceries or doctor’s appointments or work or emergencies.’ A pang of guilt runs through me like one of those cold spells where your entire body shivers. I could have asked more about him, I realize. I could have known much earlier.

“Can’t you take off the door if it’s that bad?” I’m not sure what else to say. I don’t know if I’m supposed to listen and commiserate with my parents, or actively give advice, so I settle for phrasing a shitty suggestion like a polite question, an unsatisfying middle ground where I’m doing neither.

“We tried, in the beginning. He was yelling at us the whole time. He kept it up when we got in, and then started throwing things like a fucking five-year-old.” There’s bitterness in my dad’s voice as he speaks, and I can’t blame him. I guess that was part of the reason I hadn’t asked about my brother: everything about him pisses me off. Talking about him usually breaks through the mental dam I’ve erected to keep him at bay, and then I go on a useless hate rant. My parents and I have fallen into that trap enough times to know not to take the bait we dangle in front of ourselves, but we must be insane, because we do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Them more so than me, to my partial credit.

“Then he put the door back up and we haven’t touched it since. We don’t need to deal with that again.” I nodded, as if my dad could see me.

“What about a therapist or something?” I knew it was a dumb thing to ask as soon as it came out of my mouth. My dad laughed like he was being forced to at gunpoint.

“Maybe, if they have through-the-door therapy. Or if anyone’s willing to come into someone else’s house,” he joked. For a moment, I think my dad’s asking me to come see him and mom. The next moment, I think I’m reading into his joke too much. The moment after that, I’m not sure about either. I get another jolt of guilt when I reflect on the fact that I haven’t seen my parents or my brother in person since I brought him back from college, for spring break. A few days later, people started talking about the advent of a pandemic like they’d just seen a unicorn, and by the following week, everything that could was going virtual. That included my brother’s classes, but it didn’t include my job, so I stayed away from my family ever since. Without the social cues of being physically with them, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to react to anything my parents say.

“I could come over. I’d mask up, obviously, and social distance, and you could sanitize everything I touch if that’s still supposed to be useful. And I guess I’d talk to him through the door.” Another pause.

“It’s not your job to worry about your brother. Besides, it’s not like any of us have the magic words to get him to live like a functional human being,” my dad reassures me, though his tone isn’t reassuring. It’s resigned. Just when he finishes, I hear my mom’s voice and then they start talking.

“Really? Okay,” my dad says. The next voice to come out of the phone is my mom’s.

“Again, you’re not a therapist. It’s not up to you to ‘fix’ your brother. It’s up to him. But if you want to stop by, I have a dentist appointment on Thursday, and dad can go out to restock the larder. You could talk to John then if you want, and when the two of us get back, we could do a socially-distanced visit outside.” I mull the idea over in my head; it’d be good to get out and do something different, and I could easily call off work Thursday. I don’t know how much I really want to talk to John, but it would at least be good to see my parents, if only to feel less like a deadbeat son. But I have to admit that I am curious. He’s been a pain in the ass ever since puberty hit, but he’s never done anything like this before.

“I could do that. What time should I come over?”

∞

A friend once told me my parents’ house looked ‘picket-fence nice.’ I don’t know why that memory chooses now to resurface, but as I turn my car into the long driveway, bordered by a line of bushes cutting it off from the neighbor’s property, those are the words that come to mind. An enclosed veranda sits in the front, surrounded by a verdant spread of recently-mowed grass. The veranda’s blinds are drawn up to reveal the white couch and glass coffee table, and the reclining lounge chairs on the other side of the enclosure. Next to it is a butterfly bush that comes just below the study window, sporting a few thin, round masses of flowers resembling purple reeds. They won’t last long, but they make for a nice sight. The most plant life I see at my apartment are dying trees out my back window, and dead grass on what can barely be called a lawn.

The house itself is small, although dad prefers the term ‘compact.’ It does make it easier to preserve the symmetry: study window on the left, living room window on the light, and on the second floor, a row of squat glass panes that would reveal my parents’ bedroom and the one I used to occupy if the venetian blinds weren’t drawn. The ground level is painted a dim turquoise, but the upper floor looks like it was recently repainted a bright white. I pull into the very back of the driveway, parking in front of the gray brick garage to leave room for my parents to pull in when they get back. The other side of the house isn’t too different from the front, just with fewer windows, no veranda, and a flat, expansive yard empty save for a miniature copse in the center. I remember all the footballs and frisbees that got caught in those trees when I was younger; my friends and I hated playing here because we’d always have to run around them.

I haven’t forgotten the pre-pandemic social contract, of course, but my ingrained habits kick in and I briefly wonder why my parents let me play tackle football with dirty, sweaty, wheezing, mask-less kids.

A short set of cracked stone slabs serves as stairs to the back door. At the edge of the house, on each side of the slabs, are lines of dark mulch occupied by flowers I can’t even begin to name. I climb the slabs and tentatively push on the doorknob. The door swings open. I have a key, so it wouldn’t have been an issue if my parents had locked it, but I’m happy that they haven’t. It makes me feel like I still belong here, like I’d never really left.

The back door opens into the kitchen, which is the only room in the house that leads down to the basement. It only takes me a few steps to get to the basement door. I still see the chipped white paint on the door and the wall, and the horizontal gash of wood beneath, where the chain door lock was broken off by my brother years ago. That warm and fuzzy feeling of belonging from a few moments ago disappears.

The kitchen, the hallway to the right and dining room to the left, and every other part of the house feel like places my presence will never be questioned. The basement doesn’t feel the same way. I process that thought, and as quickly as it came, it goes away, replaced by a stab of righteous anger. I’m not so much of a doormat that I’m about to let my younger brother scare me away from my parents’ basement.

After six months of reducing my social circle to work and the other tenants of my apartment complex, I’ve grown used to less emotional variance, so I take a moment to recognize that I just went through three completely different emotional states in ten seconds. Welcome home, I guess.

I flip the light switch to my right, open the door, and go down the dimly-lit set of stairs. When my feet hit solid concrete, I look briefly to my left, at the open space cluttered with power tools, toilet paper and paper towels, and carboard boxes. Then, I turn to face the door to what was the basement playroom. John’s room now, I guess. I knock.

“Hey John, it’s me. Came over to see mom and dad.” John doesn’t respond, and I wait for half a minute. I hear the muffled thump of feet falling on carpet, so I know he’s in there—not that I expected him to be anywhere else—but he doesn’t respond. Thinking he might not have heard me, I knock again. This time, I don’t hear walking in response, but I do feel the thrum of my phone buzzing in my pocket. I take it out absentmindedly and see a text from John.

They’re not here. They didn’t tell me you were coming.

I’d been prepared for this; mom and dad told me he wasn’t even speaking to them. That doesn’t stop the surge of anger that threatens my self-control. With it, old prejudices return: sympathy for my parents, resentment of him. It’s so easy to fall into old patterns of thought and behavior. I try to stifle those thoughts, knowing they’ll only end with both me and John screaming at each other—though I guess now, ‘screaming’ for him would be texting in all caps.

I start texting back, and then stop. I don’t have to do things his way. If I wanted to text him, I would have done it by now.

“I’m being careful. Mask on, and all that.” To keep calm, I talk around the fact that he’s communicating via text with someone only feet away from him, separated by a door. It works, though it also brings another sort of discontent. It’s the same irritation I felt as a kid at having to go around the trees in the center of our backyard, when going straight through would be so much easier—but I know that now, just like back then, the straightforward path is actually the one of most resistance.

That’s good.

I notice that John’s ending the final sentence of every text with a period. He didn’t used to do that. I also notice that despite not having seen me in six months, he doesn’t seem to care enough to ask how I’m doing. That, I’m more used to.

“So…how’s it going?” I know how it’s going, of course; my parents told me. I ask anyway, because if I didn’t say that I’d say something a lot worse.

I’m doing well. I’ve been doing some copywriting.

That’s what he told mom and dad, although he never gave them specifics. But seeing as he’s been paying for meals to be delivered to the house, he must be telling the truth—or he has some other way to make money, like selling organs on the Dark Web. The thought makes me smile in its absurdity. For the most part, he’s always abided by rules not set by our parents, so I see no reason to worry about what he’s doing for work. I also don’t expect him to tell me any more than he told them.

By now, I’ve already run out of things I think I can say without losing my cool. I wrack my brain for more, but nothing comes to mind besides complaints, criticisms, and strings of curses. He’s also run out of things to say, or he’s just choosing only to respond, not initiate, so I sit in front of the door in silence, listening to the creaking of a bedframe while staring at my phone, waiting for a response.

Without spoken words and texts to distract me, I imagine what I might say if I were brave—or stupid—enough. In my mind, I’m able to reason with John, get him out of that room and into the world. I know what to say and he listens. I try to imagine him responding, but I can’t recall the sound of his voice. It ends up sounding like a conversation with myself.

A part of me knows that this isn’t going to get me anywhere, that the exchanges I create in my head don’t match up with what would happen in reality. But another part of me feels a little hopeful, as if by imagining a scenario where John leaves his room and starts interacting with his family and, just maybe, the rest of the world like a normal human being, the odds of that scenario becoming real increase. I remember a famous quote I read online: ‘with our minds we make the world.’ Was that Gandhi, or the Buddha?

Since I have nothing to say, I settle on something to ask.

“Why aren’t you leaving the playroom?”

It’s my room.

“It didn’t used to be.”

It is now.

The scenario playing out in my head turns from a reasoned discussion which ends in me convincing John to leave the room, to me kicking down the door and dragging him up the stairs.

“And why’s that? I get the whole shelter-in-place thing, but you have an entire house for that.” In defiance of my thoughts, I try to be civil.

This room has everything I need. Bathroom, shower, bed, laptop, internet access, supplies.

That didn’t answer my question. I’d already heard from my parents how he’s managed to go for months in the playroom without leaving: he stockpiled a bunch of things, mostly toiletries, after I brought him back from school for spring break, back when everyone was hoarding toilet paper for a reason I never really understood. As for the food he orders, my parents bring it down for him. It’s enabling, and I insinuated as much, but they don’t have the heart to deny him food and essentially starve him out. I can understand not wanting to starve your kid, but I wonder if it wouldn’t be for the best.

“Look, mom and dad told me how you’re living down here. Your supplies are gonna run out eventually, and you’re gonna have to go out and get more. You literally can’t live like this. It’s not sustainable.” The veneer of civility that I’ve been trying to coat over this entire conversation is cracking now, and I don’t think I can fix it. I don’t think I want to. I always overestimate how much patience I have for my brother.

They’ll get more for me.

“You really think so? You think they’re gonna let you stay in there?”

They have so far.

“And why the hell do you want them to?”

Why not? I have a job, a place to stay, food to eat, money to buy it with, and tons of ways to connect to people. I can live my life in here just as well as anyone out there.

“Okay, that’s total bullshit. You can’t live in one room your whole life. Once the pandemic is over and everything goes back to normal, mom and dad aren’t gonna tolerate you being holed up in here like a fucking cave troll.” And like that, the veneer is shattered and the criticisms and curses start flowing. Only a matter of time now till I start complaining. Honestly, it feels good. Usually when I get into arguments with John, we end up talking over each other the entire time, and by the end of it no one has any real idea what the other one was saying. Now, since he’s communicating via text, I can actually say my piece. A minute passes without a text, and I wonder if I somehow got through to him.

Do you know the Chinese Room thought experiment?

The text catches me off-guard; it’s a total non-sequitur. Although the fact that he just changed the subject is pretty damning evidence he brushed off everything I said.

“Yeah. It’s the one where the guy uses a set of instructions to write perfect Chinese without actually understanding it.”

His responses to the questions in Chinese are so perfect that they’re indistinguishable from those of a native speaker. With the instructions he gets, he’s basically fluent in Chinese without ever having set foot in China or knowing a single thing about the language. It’s supposed to disprove strong AI, but it also proves that you can get knowledge without experience. With the right instructions, you can learn and do everything you need in a single room.

“So, what you’re telling me is that you’ve locked yourself in a room for six months to prove the point of a thought experiment that isn’t even relevant to what the experiment actually set out to prove? Are you fucking stupid?” I ask the question, but I already know the answer: yes. He is stupid. Fuck being nice, fuck trying to reason with a guy who’s torturing his parents and freeloading in their basement in the pursuit of some pseudo-philosophical theory he probably thinks he deserves a PhD for dreaming up.

“Your idea doesn’t even work! The only reason you’re able to do this shit is because you live in a house and use electricity, water, and Wi-Fi you don’t have to pay for!” Now I’m talking with my hands as if he can see me, jerking them in front of me with every hard sound I make and slamming my free palm against the door. I don’t even hear my phone vibrating in my hand, and even though I feel it I don’t look until I’m done ranting.

That’s not why I’m doing it.

I take a minute to breathe. I hate yelling at him, I realize. I always seem to forget that. I think it will make me feel better, and it never does, not even when he lets me finish my rants. Yelling feels like I’ve lost.

“Then enlighten me, Searle,” I say with as much venom as I can muster.

I’m doing it because I can, and there’s no reason not to.

As soon as I read the text, I viscerally feel its absurdity. The reason John says doesn’t exist comes to mind immediately: we need people. John, even though he doesn’t seem to appreciate the fact, needs people. He needs his parents, the Uber Eats, Grubhub, or DoorDash people who deliver his food, the plumbers who installed the toilet and shower, whoever made the laptop he uses and the phone he’s texting on—he needs more people than I can even list.

But if I told him, I think I know what he’d say: he doesn’t need them in the room. The room separates him from them; they deposit things and he uses them to…what? Be a person without seeing people? Interact with them without knowing how to interact? The guy in the Chinese Room creates the illusion of a Chinese speaker, but what does John create? The illusion of a functional human being? He was one before he started being a shut-in, even if he was a shitty one a lot of the time.

I give up on trying to create a rational explanation for what he’s been doing. Eventually, he’ll have to come out. Even if he can, technically, survive in there all by himself, there’s only so much isolation a person can take. Humans need to connect with each other, and conversations over text and even video chat aren’t the same as the real thing. We need sensory experience of the people and things we care about. I’m standing in my parents’ house in the middle of a pandemic, taking the admittedly small risk that I might transmit or receive a potentially-deadly virus, because of that fact.

“Humans are social creatures.” I know it’s trite even as I say it, a platitude a college student would use to start a paper they don’t want to write. It won’t mean anything to John. I realize, as I always do when talking to him, that nothing I say will. Time and distance make me forget, but I always remember again.

I know. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?

I stare at my phone, as I’ve been for the past several minutes, reading the words on the screen. They’re contained in little gray boxes with an extension curving towards the left of the screen, like John’s a character in a comic book speaking just beyond the border, out of my reach and out of my sight.

“I’m gonna wait for mom and dad.” I say the words mechanically, as if all the emotions I’d experienced over the course of our conversation were part of a program that had been shut off. As I walk up the stairs, I keep my phone clutched in my hand, waiting for it to vibrate as John gets in his last word, like he always does. Even through text, I wouldn’t expect anything different from him.

The text I’m anticipating doesn’t come. I close the door to the basement and go back outside. I sit on the slab stairs and look out at the copse, trying to peer through the spaces between the dying leaves on its trees. When my parents pull into the driveway, I’m still holding my phone, waiting.

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