Visual Arts Junction Contest Winners!
Professional Category
Moving by Heather Spiva
I didn’t see it at first.
Maybe it was because the sun was setting and the endless spread of wheat in the sky blinded me. Even if this had been my view for almost twenty years, it still made me stop.
I hadn’t been gone forever; only away from the farm for a year. But when I rounded past the barn and took a short cut to the house, I tripped.
No one saw me fall. And if they did, I didn’t care. If living on my own taught me anything it was “get over yourself.” You know, as in, forget about your mistakes, keep moving forward; that type of thing. I wasn’t embarrassed by anything anymore; I didn’t have time for regrets.
I lay still, like the oak trees lining the perimeter to our property. With the cool, damp floor and smell of dry grass awaiting the dew of night, I don’t know, it was like I couldn’t get up. The grass had claws or something and this time, they had tied me to their fortress; waiting to eat me alive. I’m not sure how long I was there. But it was long enough to see the sky move, and watch the stars poke through their thick tapestry.
“Ellie? Ellie where are you?” I could hear anxiety in my sister’s voice. Sam was looking for me, but I could do it. I couldn’t get up. What was wrong with me? Maybe, I’d hurt my head harder than I thought.
I reached up to feel my head, but felt nothing.
Rolling onto my back, I breathed deep. The sky was fuchsia now, just like Mrs. Nelson’s flowers in her front patio. Surely, she would’ve cared to see me on the ground, floundering. Living with her had been different. She was old and senile; hated my skinny jeans and red lipstick. But it was her love of flowers; that was the tie that kept me paying $600 a month for a studio above the garage without a washroom.
I reached out, hitting my hand on metal. The sound of my mother’s engagement ring pinged softly on it. Flecks of rust tumbled off the rim, like crumpled sycamore leaves from November before the snow and after the heat.
Dad was the last one to use the tractor. He was the reason I tripped over it.
His stroke was unforeseen.
The cancer in mom, also unforeseen.
“Ellie? For Pete’s sake, I don’t have all night. I’ve got to get back home to the kids.”
I sighed. The only reason we were here was to figure out what to do with the house. I looked at the rust on the ring and put my hand behind my head, grinding the two elements into the dirt. The sky was black now, except for a faint glint of a sparkle on the horizon.
I wanted dad. I wanted him in his overalls. I wanted mom and her pies, and her thin hands working on the tractor engine.
“Ellie? What, are you dead?”
I raised my hand, heavy in memories and rust and diamonds. “Sam, I’m here.”
I got up, walked in and turned on the porch light. I paid over my share of the life insurance to Sam.
The house and barn had a new owner.
Bio: Heather Spiva is a freelance writer from Sacramento, CA. She loves reading and writing and spending lots of time with her two young boys and firefighter husband. When she has free time, which is rare, she spends it gardening or eating chocolate. heatherji@hotmail.com
JudgeLinda Yezak
What I liked about your entry: Well written piece, beautifully descriptive.
What could be improved: I found a few punctuation errors, such as using a semicolon instead of a comma.
Judge Lillie Ammann
What I liked about your entry: You drew me into the story so I experienced the narrator’s emotions.
What could be improved: Correcting a few minor grammar errors would make for smoother reading.
Judge Nanci Arvizu
What I liked about your entry: The way you described her mother’s ring hitting the rusty rim. Nice visual.
What could be improved: Proofreading. There’s some typo’s that the computer didn’t pick up because they’re grammar issues. Makes for a harsh “bump” in the story.
Judge Aggie Villanueva
What I liked about your entry: Great opening paragraph. You moved me emotionally in the best way possible. You drew tears from me without your character crying. Bravo.
What could be improved: A little tightening of words in the two paragraphs with “Ellie where are you?” and “just like Mrs. Nelson’s flowers.”
Amateur Category
Backroads Errand by Claire Gillian
“When you see the red wagon wheel on the left side of the road, turn right and you’re there.” My mother’s thin voice had detailed the ten mile route to the only country store that carried her beloved Tastee Cakes. During her better days, she drove herself once a week.
I hadn’t lived in the back woods of North Carolina in over two decades, so I’d taken meticulous notes. Five turns, she’d told me, marked by a graffiti-covered boulder, a burnt trailer, a bait shop named Frosty’s, a volunteer fire station and a red wagon wheel.
After several wrong turns, I pulled into Lou’s Little Store and began my search. I scanned the most logical places, but couldn’t find any Tastee Cakes.
“Can I help you find somethin’, honey?” A blonde wearing foundation a shade too dark called out from behind the counter.
“I’m looking for Tastee Cakes.” I don’t normally ask for help in convenience stores. I shouldn’t have to because it’s supposed to be convenient which is supposed to mean easy to find.
“Sorry, we’re all out.” The woman walked to where I stood and pointed to a rack on my left. “But we got Little Debbie’s right here. They’s just as good.”
“No. I don’t want anything but Tastee Cakes. Are you sure you don’t have any in the back?” I began to gnaw on the inside of my mouth as I considered the consequences of returning empty-handed.
“I’m sure.” She shrugged and returned to her station behind the counter.
“Could you please check?” My breath came faster and my voice rose.
“There’s nowhere to check, honey. What you see is all we got.”
I caught a glimpse of a nearly naked man on the pages of the magazine she flipped. “Do you know any other places near here that sell Tastee Cakes?”
“No. Sorry. I think you should just try the Little Debbie’s. They’re fine.” Another naked man flashed by on a new page.
Hysteria shoved at the edge of my self-control. Between clenched teeth I said, “I don’t want Little Debbie. I want Tastee Cake! My mother used to come here every week for them. She doesn’t eat much these days, but I know she’ll eat one of those.” I choked back the tears that formed. If I hadn’t allowed myself to cry thus far, I’d be damned if I’d do it over a cupcake.
She put down her magazine and looked at me with new interest. “Is your mamma Miz Carolyn Teague?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, well why didn’t you say so? I got Miz Teague’s cakes right here.” She pulled out five packages of chocolate cup cakes and two coffee cakes from a box beneath the counter.
The cellophane wrapped treats caught the light and winked at me. “Oh. Oh, thank you so much.”
“You tell your mamma we’re prayin’ real hard for her.”
I nodded and fished out my wallet. “How much?”
She patted my hand, smiled and shook her head. “We don’t never charge for these.”
I exhaled the breath I hadn’t even realized I’d held and gave her a long teary smile. “Thank you.”
“See you next week?”
“I hope so.”
My mother’s cakes in hand, I began my trip home, making a left at the red wagon wheel.
Bio: Claire Gillian, The Word Busker, is a number-crunching executive by profession but an after hours writer by passion. With three completed novels, a fourth in process and countless short stories and flash fictions to her name, she’s currently dipping her toe into the publishing arena. Though her parents have lived in rural North Carolina for over thirty-five years, she’s been a Pacific Northwest transplant for the past sixteen, with previous stops in New Mexico and Texas.
Judge Linda Yezak
What I liked about your entry: Very good dialogue, good use of it to indicate setting.
What could be improved: Author should have indicated why the cakes were so vital as to bring the MC to near hysteria when they weren’t available. “My mother’s thin voice” doesn’t quite illustrate the need for urgency or explain the clerk’s offer of prayers. Otherwise, good piece!
Judge Lillie Ammann
What I liked about your entry: You managed to make the store clerk a multi-dimensional character by pointing out what she was reading in contrast to her generosity and prayers.
What could be improved: There are a few minor grammar errors.
Judge Nanci Arvizu
What I liked about your entry: The driving instructions. I live like that!
What could be improved: not sure… Maybe include a little more about her mother’s life in the small town, since the clerk seemed to know her personally.
Judge Aggie Villanueva
What I liked about your entry: It was a busy work day when I stopped to read the contest entries. From the first word you captured me. Excellent story construction the way you tantalized me with this “cake emergency” until you revealed why with that professional drum roll so vital to short stories. Excellent last sentence bringing us back round to the first.
What could be improved: Honestly couldn’t find anything wrong.
The Fine Print: You must respond within 5 days of the date on your winning email announcement. If you do not reply to your winning email announcement within that time limit, your prizes will be assigned to the second place entrant. The judges’ critiques are confined to short comments; no in depth critique/editing. No editing has been done to the entries, as they are judged for raw talent only. Entrants will be automatically added to the Visual Arts Junction newsletter. You many unsubscribe at any time. All rights to the Bedtime Story image remain with the creator, Aggie Villanueva.
Professional Category: Donny’s Friend by Salvatore Buttaci
Salvatore Butacci joined me on Page Readers to talk about his winning entry and his collection of short stories "Flashing My Shorts".
If Donny could’ve somehow unraveled the wires in his brain so that thinking came easily, he would have eventually forgiven them.
All those barren years they had prayed for a child, until finally in disgust Donny’s father had decided, “No more prayers. What’s meant to be will be. No more knocking at Heaven’s door.” If Donny could have, he would have taken pity on the two of them: his proud, exasperated father and his brokenhearted mother.
“Keep this up, Tina, and I’ll get on the horn and call the ones in the long white coats and let them haul your skinny ass out of here!” Then, realizing his cruelty, waved his hand as if to erase the threat, and said, “I’m sorry, Tina, but you’ve got to pull your pretty self together. No kid? Okay, we live with it. We still have you and me, right?”
And Tina smiled at Milt, but they both knew it was insincere.
Autism. Donny at three. The pediatrician explaining how it wasn’t the end of the world, but the diagnosis fell on Donny’s parents like a ton of lost dreams.
Donny sat still on the white table. When Tina walked over to the table and affectionately squeezed him, he did not react. His brown eyes scanned the room, jumping from the desk to the ceiling to the doctor to his parents to the white walls hardly visible behind the twenty or so framed degrees and awards that told the story of Dr. Peterson’s career. What those eyes saw never made it back to Donny’s tangled-up brain.
Dr. Peterson explained autism to them, but neither was listening. All those years waiting. Then this. It wasn’t fair. But what was even less fair came later. Milt and Tina gave Donny hardly any attention. He could not speak except for grunting whatever he was feeling but could not communicate. It especially unnerved his father while his mother would try to speak over those sounds till it got so that Milt did more and more overtime at work, not for extra money but for some quiet peace.
Most of Donny’s grunts were responses to the stuffed bunny Donny’s Aunt Meg had brought him, the one that suddenly one day had come to life. “A troll in the woods knew some magic, so I asked him to change my cotton stuffings to flesh and organs, let blood run through my veins. You know, be alive! And that little man made me real.”
Bunny paused and said, “Hey, care to be my friend?” Donny grunted, then held the white bunny against his chest, and grunted some more. “Yeah, kid, I know what you mean. Humans ain’t big on listening. Things turn sour, they give up. But you and me, we got each other now.”
Without knowing why his eyes were filling up with wetness, Donny brushed the beads away and grunted. “Oh, that?” said his only friend. “They call them ‘tears.’ It just means you’re one happy little boy!”
Salvatore Buttaci is an obsessive-compulsive writer who plies his craft everyday. His work has appeared widely. He was the 2007 recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award. His collection of 164 short-fiction stories, Flashing My Shorts, is available from All That Matters Press or from Amazon.com. He lives with his wife, Sharon, in West Virginia.
NOTE FROM SALVATORE: Aggie, the good news of my contest win comes on the same day I will be taping an interview on our local NBC-TV station to run this Sunday at 9:00 a.m. here in southern West Virginia. The show is called “In Focus” and I will get the opportunity to speak about my writings, especially about my new book Flashing My Shorts.
Judge Lillie Ammann
What I like about your entry: The ending is a great twist and evokes emotion.
What could be improved: The first part of the story might be improved by changing some passive sentences to active.
Judge Aggie Villanueva
What I like about your entry: Excellent opening line. I enjoyed how Donny’s life parralelled that of The Velveteen Rabbit story. Loved your twist of clichés, to bring back reader attention, such as: fell on Donny’s parents like a ton of lost dreams.
What could be improved: Could eliminate the paragraph of Donny sitting on the doctors table looking around, in order to use those words to go more into Donny’s salvation: the velveteen rabbit.
Judge Cindy Bauer
What I like about your entry: I really liked how the stuffed animal was able to capture the attention of the boy with autism, though nothing else could reach him. It shows that while the disease is usually dibilitating, the cause and treatments are still left with much to discover as it shows the brain does function in some degree at a somewhat normal capacity and that perhaps, if explored more, each particular case could be treated focusing on the particulars that seem to reach out and touch that particular child, thus opening many new doors for both the child and the parents.
What could be improved: I was confused about the conversation the stuffed animal was having with the young boy. Was the animal speaking to him when no one else was around or was it within the realm of the boy’s mind, showing potential for imagination. I would’ve liked to have seen a different approach to that segment of the story so the reader is clear.
Judge Nanci Arvizu
What I like about your entry: I’m a big fan of stories that are similar to the classics, but instead take us down a different path. This is similar to the story of The Velveteen Rabbit (although it’s been awhile since I’ve read it), yet with its modern tale with autism.
What could be improved: Add in a little more about Donny and his new friends relationship
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Amateur Category: Paint my Dreams by Lubna Kably
Lubna Kably
Ann’s eyes sparkled when she saw this book lying on a corner table in the attic. What was next to it? It looked like a magic lamp. A few other interesting bric-a-bracs lay scattered around.
Ann inched closer towards the table. Her grandmother had recently expired and she had accompanied her mother to this rambling old house. The assets were to be divided and the house sold.
She could hear Uncle Neil and Mama arguing again. Ignoring the shrill voices emanating from the living room downstairs, she looked closely at the book cover. “The Velveteen Rabbit”, it read. Ann always wanted a pet rabbit, but they lived in a tiny cramped flat in a crowded city. A rabbit will not be happy in a tiny cage, her mother had patiently explained, over and over again. Yet, whenever she passed a pet shop, Ann could not help halting, even if, to just peer through the windows.
Ann dusted the book and opened it. The childish scrawl on the front page was faint with age, perhaps it said: Hazel. “Oh, this is Granny’s book”, said Ann to no one in particular. Hugging the book tightly to her chest, she ran downstairs. “Mama, Mama, I want to keep this book”, she pleaded. Uncle Neil roughly pulled the book from her, flipped open the pages, said it was a worthless piece of junk and that she could have it. Mama had smiled and told her to run out and play.
Back home, tucked in bed, Ann began to read the book. It was about a toy rabbit who wanted to be a real rabbit and whose wish came true. “I wish my wish would come true, Mama”, she said, as her mother kissed her goodnight and switched off the lights.
Ann was lonely. Her mother caught up in her work and household chores was never around. She used to meet her father over weekends, but now he had moved away to another city. Phone calls from him were getting less frequent. A silent tear rolled down Ann’s cheek as she fell asleep.
The days rolled on, the book lay on a shelf, quite forgotten. Till one day, Mama told her that they were moving to a large house in the suburbs. Some art which Granny had in her house had fetched a good price. Ann didn’t then know what art was, she didn’t care. She was so excited about the move.
She remembered that she had rubbed hard on the magic lamp in the attic and had made a wish – for a fluffy white rabbit. Her pet rabbit – Velveteen and she would now play in the front yard of their new home.
Today, twenty odd years later, as a struggling artist, holding a temporary part time job to make ends meet, Ann looks back on the day she walked into the dusty attic. She knows there is no place for pessimistic disbelief in her life.
“You need to tread on the path of wonder, joy and trust and you don’t need a magic lamp to achieve your dreams”, she tells her friends. She knows that someday soon she will be a success and she heads back to her tiny studio to paint her dreams.
Lubna Kably is based in the busy city of Mumbai, India. While she is a number cruncher by profession, she loves writing – especially travelogues which appear occasionally on various portals. One of her submissions was accepted by Traveler’s Tales in their compilation of funny gut-busting misadventures: The Thong Also Rises. She is currently experimenting with Haiku and this is her first attempt at writing something unrelated to travel or taxes.
Judge Lillie Ammann
What I like about your entry: Great storyline that entertains and inspires.
What could be improved: The story could be improved by using more conversational wording and avoiding stilted phrases such as “recently expired.”
Judge Aggie Villanueva
What I like about your entry: I like the symmetry of the story’s tie-in of the title and opening with the closing. A big chunk of the Ann’s life is revealed in very few words, her dreams, the divorce, her greedy uncle, going from poverty to comfortable middle class. Good use of the economy of words.
What could be improved: Don’t repeat information for the reader. Such as, “She could hear Uncle Neil and Mama arguing again. Ignoring the shrill voices emanating from the living room downstairs…” You could eliminate the first sentence and readers would still know there was an argument over money going on between the adults. Tie up the loose end of what happened with her dad and how that ties into her optimism 20 years later.
Judge Cindy Bauer
What I like about your entry: Shows much potential; suits the picture used for the contest; would like to read more – grabbed me right away and that’s difficult to do in a short story!
What could be improved: Dislike the use of the word “expired”, though I know it is commonly used in the health field. Prefer “gone to live with our Lord” or something along those lines. Passed away would be okay, too.
Judge Nanci Arvizu
What I like about your entry: As a believer in the power of positive thinking and dreaming big, the author is obviously writing from her heart.
What could be improved: The writer is so talented, I think the word count is what held her back from telling more of her story. I’m betting she could turn this story into a novella! .
The Fine Print: You must respond within 5 days of the date on your winning email announcement. If you do not reply to your winning email announcement within that time limit, your prizes will be assigned to the second place entrant. The judges’ critiques are confined to short comments; no in depth critique/editing. No editing has been done to the entries. Entrants will be automatically added to the Visual Arts Junction newsletter. You many unsubscribe at any time. All rights to the Bedtime Story image remain with the creator, Aggie Villanueva.
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