What is 5MinuteFiction, you say? It’s an adrenaline-fueled, instant-gratification sort of writing contest. Sound fun? Great! Get in there and get dirty!
The Rules
* You get five minutes to write a piece of prose or poetry in any style or genre
* You must directly reference today’s prompt: high school
(Note: The prompt is the word. The picture is for decoration/inspiration.)
* Post your entry as a comment to this post.
I’ll close the contest at 1:45. That gives you 5 minutes to write and ten to accommodate the vagaries of relative time, technology, and the fickle internets. If you are confused or just want to whine, feel free to email me.
At the close of the contest, this week’s guest judge, Jeff Bennington, @TweetTheBook, author of Reunion, will nominate five finalists. (Jeff let me guest post on his blog last week, so be sure to check that out: me guest posting.)
I’ll put the nominees in a poll, and at 9:00 EDT tomorrow I’ll close the poll and declare the winner.
For updates, you can subscribe to my RSS Feed, “like” my Facebook Page, or follow me on twitter.
What’s the prize? Well, nothing, obviously. But we’ll all agree to tweet and/or blog about the winner of today’s contest so their fame and fortune will be assured.
A Few Notes:
* In the interest of time and formatting, it’s best to type straight into the comment box or notepad. It’s also smart to do a quick highlight and copy before you hit “post” just in case the internets decide to eat your entry. If your entry doesn’t appear right away, email me sometimes comments go into the suspected spam folder and I have to dig them out.
* I reserve the right to remove hate speech or similar but I’m not too picky about the other stuff.
* This is all for fun and self-promotion. So be sure to put your twitter handle at the end of your post and a link to your blog if you have one.
“It’s the same dream every night. I’m in high school, and it’s the week of final exams. And it’s not just an exam that I haven’t studied for, but it’s a class I can’t even remember signing up for, didn’t attend a single period of. By the end, I muddle my way through, but I always wake up absolutely covered in sweat and panting for air.”
“I think everyone has had that dream at one point.”
“Yes, but that’s rather why I came to talk to you today, Principal Simmons. This time, I’m pretty sure I’m not dreaming, and my class really is getting quite antsy waiting for their test.”
@DL_Thurston
Breathe… stand still.
Here he comes.
Blink. Smile.
There he goes. Here I am.
Push the glasses up my nose. Clutch my books.
Turn away.
Best friend laughs.
Try to blend.
Doesn’t work.
Late to class. Red face. Hunched shoulders.
Letters blur. “Read aloud.”
Gulp. Stutter.
Is it over?
High school days rush by.
Thought they were so bad.
Kinda wish I had them back.
@SonshineMusic
It was so strange to see the high school empty and dark. There was a certain creepy vibe that seemed to float around the place like a fog. Even my sneaker covered feet made a hollow sound as I moved down the hallway. Just yesterday the place was filled with chatty, happy and energetic students. Now it was a crime scene, and it changed the building so drastically.
I needed to find the gym, which was easier than I thought. It was easy to get lost in places like this, but I could hear voices, hushed and frantic. They lead me right to the place. I paused in the doorway though, because I could smell blood. It made my nose twitch, and I felt a pulling in my brain. Grasping the doorframe to steady myself, I cleared my mind and took one step into the gym.
It came all at once, in a giant force of rage and fear. I could see the large man, holding what I think was a tire iron. I watched him raise it, bringing it down onto someone’s body, onto someone’s head. I could see the man clearly, I was watching his rage filled face, getting splattered with blood as he brought the tire iron down again and again. It only took one step to see this, and I wanted to run from the building. Instead I fell to my knees, and left my breakfast all over the floor. It had been a long time since a vision had made me throw up.
@adenpenn
My last day of high school was bittersweet. I had been going to school with most of my classmates since Kindergarten. It will be strange not see those people everyday any more.
My dad took me to school for my last day, just like he took me to school for my first day of Kindergarten. And just like 13 years before, he had me pose in front of the building for a picture. He reached over and gave me a hug.
“I can’t believe this day has arrived. I want you to know that I’m proud of you.” He tightened his arms around me briefly before pulling away. He had tears in his eyes, just like I did. “You better get in there and turn in that paper for your English class.”
I turned and quickly fled in to the building. Straight in to the arms of my best friend, Tony.
“Hey, what’s this all about?” Tony asked.
“Everything is changing, and I’m not ready for it.” I said against his chest.
“It’s the way of life, babe. You know that.” He took a step back and looked down at me. “But no matter what, we will always be best friends.”
Mrs. O’Brien reached a shaky hand inside her desk and retrieved her thermus. The students wouldn’t be the wiser if she took just a nip, just something to take the edge off.
Each long and terrible year brought her closer and closer to finishing that thermus in one day. It’s starts off with just a nip, and as the students mindless words turn into a loud hum in her ears, it’s all she can do not to reach across the desk and grab them by their throats.
“Just ten more days until retirement” she whispered to herself and tossed down another swig just as a spit ball grazed her ear and splashed on the chalkboard behind her.
“Fucking high school”
@thansenwrites
The cool ones gathered in the staircase. The four blondes sneered at the Freshmen, two weeks into school and looking not as frightened as they did when they started. Janice, the leader of the pack, stuck her left leg out just so, causing a short brunette in braces and two year old jeans to trip and drop her books.
They all laughed, making clucking noises and looking innocent like demons.
“Yo, dork. You need to be more careful in these stairs. Don’t want you getting hurt, now, do we?” Janice sidled up to the girl, who was beneath her notice to even think of knowing her name. She whispered, “you tell anyone, anything, and You. Will. Be. Very. Very. Sorry. Got me?”
The girl nodded, a few tears letting loose, wiped away with a dribble of snot. As she shot up the remaining stairs, Janice and the others headed down. They were all smiling shit eating grins, bumping into other lowlife scum on the way down.
Janice turned to her clique. “See ya later girls!”
They all went their separate ways for the next period.
Janice entered her room. “Hello, Class.”
As one, the students straightened up. “Good Afternoon, Ms. Russell.”
Kari gasped as one of the football players pushed past her on his way into a classroom, her back meeting painfully with the handle of a locker.
“Can’t even apologize…” she muttered, continuing down the hallway. She never could figure out why people enjoyed coming to school; her sister was always bouncing at the bus stop. But then, she was popular. Kari was not.
Another faceless person in the crowd knocked into her, her books flying to the floor. As usual, no one stopped to help her pick them up, and why would they? The bell was ringing, and why should they be late for someone they didn’t even know? No one to notice her picking up her papers and books. No one to notice her tears.
Sam looked around the room at all the empty desks. He was early, for once, and felt good about that; but the empty feeling in his stomach wouldn’t leave. Was he ready for a new school? Would he fit in? God, how high school of him, wondering if he would fit in–but this was high school, so that was appropriate in its own, awkward way. At least he didn’t have to share the room, like some of the other teachers. Then again, nobody wanted to share this windowless, ill-begotten cave.
He started writing his name on the board, then wiped it off. Chalk–he couldn’t believe the school still used chalk. It ground in his fingers, in his bones, just thinking about it. Then he looked down at his sleeve, and sighed. Yes, he truly hated chalk. He sighed again, and checked his watch. The bell rang.
He wrote his name on the board, then went around the room placing a pinch of powder in each seat. Students began to appear in flashes of various colors and smells.
High school. He shuddered.
When the room was mostly full, he began his lesson. “Greetings, class. This–” he pointed to the board “–is my name. It’s how I’m bound, and how you can summon me if you’re having problems. In our first lesson, we’ll be discussing what that means.”
A student raised her hand, and he peered into her aura. She didn’t know how to hide a thing, yet. He could see her name, her true name, though with high school students that was still shifting. “Yes, Amanda?”
Another thousand years, he thought. Another thousand years, and his service would be done.
He wondered if any of them would still be alive; if they’d make the same mistakes that he had.
Well, they always needed more teachers.
@kaolinfire
“Did you enjoy high school?” the shrink asked, settling back into the leather seat. The ends of the armrests were stained, from sweaty hands, and Mary wondered what scared the shrink.
“I loved high school,” she answered.
“That’s very unusual,” he said, a note of something in his voice Mary couldn’t quite name but chose to believe was envy.
She shrugged. “I’m an unusual sort of girl.”
The shrink said something under his breath that sounded like “quite,” but Mary let that one go too. This man was a legend. The best. His fee proved it.
“What did you like about high school?” he continued.
“Everything. The cliques, the parties, the school spirit. All of it.”
“I see. Well, that’s our time for today, we should explore this further next week.” He stood, smiling, his hand extended. “If you’ll see Vicki on the way out.”
Mary shook his hand and left the room. She stood by the receptionist’s desk–which was empty–waiting. She heard a woman’s voice, hopefully Vicki because Mary had another appointment, and leaned in to call to her. She heard the shrink’s voice and stopped, listening.
“This one,” he said, “actually thought high school was nice. Certifiable.”
I remember Billy. He sat behind me. Always tried lookin’ over my shoulder to get the answers on a test. I couldn’t ever call him out on it. He was twice my size and had a punch that could break a brick into pieces. No way would I mess with that.
One time, I knew he copied everything I wrote during a test. I hated that. Let me do all the work and he gets away scott-free with a passing grade. Must be nice.
But Billy doesn’t known brains can beat brawn. Sure he could give someone a black eye, but I could give him a failing grade on the test. I had to time it right. Wait for him to copy all the answers, flip my pencil over, then erase everything I wrote. More importantly, I had to fill in the correct answers before the teacher collected the tests.
I did it with sweat forming on my forehead and my heart pounding through my chest. Not because I thought Billy would find out what I did, because he didn’t. I just didn’t want to have a failing grade. I wanted a perfect score, and I got it.
Billy never cheated off my test again after that.
Twitter: @byoung210
High school. Like a bad dream repeating itself. This time she was running. She knew she had to stop him before it was too late. This was the third time Sarah Hentice had been in the same hallway, on the same morning, at the same time. All in one day! Today. The first time of course, she had no clue what was happening, or that is to say, what was going to happen. The second time, it was all a daze.
Sarah had closed her locker, having retrieve her chemistry text book. She really wasn’t looking forward to chemistry. Pop quiz every day followed by a boring lecture. She knew she could get interested in the subject but not with such a boring teacher. She had walked, almost shuffled, down the hallway along with a couple hundred other kids, just doing the drill. Once the bell had rung and everyone was seated, Mr. Smith had taken the roll.
That’s when it happened.
That creepy new kid had then stood up, ran towards the teacher’s desk shouting all the while. Sarah still couldn’t make out what he was saying, even now, having been through it twice already. And then he’d raised his hand and, BANG. Blood spurted back onto the black board behind Mr. Smith’s head. The class erupting in chaos as screams immediately filled the air. And the creepy kid turned, looked straight at Sarah, and raised his hand.
That was all she could remember. From the first time. The second time, even though she knew what was going to happen, she couldn’t get her mind around that fact that it actually was happening. Not just some kind of nightmare or flashback. That second time, as the creepy kid raised his hand and she made eye contact with him, she knew. She knew it was real, she knew she was here AGAIN, and she knew he knew. She could tell by the way he kind of did a crazy smile grin and started saying something. Something she still couldn’t make out.
This time it would be different. Sarah slammed her locker door shut and immediately started down the hallway. Running. Running for all she was worth. This time it would be different.
@redshirt6
Sorry, no story from me this week. Too much High School drama in the office.
She came in with a BANG as the door swung back against the blackboard. We all knew better than to let that door go when coming in, but she was new. Her first class here and yet she didn’t look apologetic at all for having interrupted Mrs. Harrison’s lecture on swamp moss.
Entering the room, she surveyed the rest of us as if we were her subjects. She paraded through the room like a queen and gracefully sat herself down in the empty desk next to mine. With a flip of her dark hair, she announced: “I’m Beatrice.”
The rest of us were stunned. We were used to school princesses here – in Southern California I think we got more than our fair share, but she was nothing like them. Her clothes were actually sloppy – grayish-brown men’s corduroys cinched up around her waste with a rope and a ragged Hard Rock T-shirt hanging off one shoulder.
I couldn’t help staring at her and had the sense that the rest of the class was doing the same. Mrs. Harrison, after what seemed like hours, finally asked, “Do you belong here? I mean, are you a new student?”
Beatrice just looked at her. Then she slowly turned her face toward me, a face that looked remarkably familiar – like the one I saw in my mirror every morning. She gave me a slow wink and then said, “Just visiting. What do you know about the multiverse?”
@WendyStrain
high school fishbowls spill
into college rivulets
life’s rapids surprise
@Happybucket
High School will be the best time of your life, they always told him. Well, for the past three years of it, Albert felt that it was nothing of the sort. High School involved being picked on by kids that were three feet taller than him. And picked on may be a bit kind of a word. They shoved him head first into the toilet and then flushed. They would throw him into the trash can on the Senior Lawn and then bang it with sticks. Once, a couple members of the football team even dragged him behind the bleachers during PE and peed on him. He was still called Mellow Yellow by some as a result of that event. And all of this for no reason he could ever discern other than he got better grades than most. Best time of his life? Not hardly.
But that was all about to change. Because now, he was the senior. And he was determined to make sure no one had picked on him. He spent the summer in a camp for un-athletic kids like him that wanted to learn to be athletic. He had bulked up, learned to play basketball and baseball, and, most importantly to his mind, wrestle and box. He was back at school, and he had vengeance on his mind.
No one recognized him at first. He was a far cry from skinny little Albert they knew last year. He even heard a few girls wonder who the hot guy was. That almost stopped him from his first act of vengeance. Almost. But then he saw him. Jose Diego, no doubt soon to be starting quarterback and captain of the varsity football team. A boy that had beat up and picked on Albert since they were both in 7th grade.
“Jose,” Albert called. The dark skinned boy looked his way, shock on his face as he recognized Albert. “It’s time”
With that, Albert let loose and punched Jose in the jaw.
Maybe High School would be the best time of his life after all.
@blanchardauthor
Reunion
I was dreading this moment. It was my ten year high school reunion. I was so different from the girl I was back then. I wondered if anyone would even recognize me. I was so shy; I doubted most people knew who I was. Perhaps they would just pigeonhole me into the role I was in back then … and forget about me just as before.
The quiet girl in the corner was always looked over. Sure, I had thoughts back then, but I was so reserved, so afraid to be myself and tell others what was on my mind. High school showed me what real life was going to be like and that I needed to step up if I was going to make my mark. Life was nothing more than a popularity contest. Sure, smarts and skills would get you so far, but when it comes down to it, the prettiest and most popular always wins.
With that knowledge, I made a pact with myself that I would be different in college. I would be unique, I would be assertive, I would be remembered. I blossomed, becoming the person I never was, and who I always wanted to be.
@mlgammella
http://mlgammella.blogspot.com/
He regaled us with tales of conquest, of glory, of pillage and plunder and rampaging across the plains of Asia, conqueror lands as we went. The tales of what one man accomplished when he was our age, becoming ruler of the known world while we were sitting there at tiny desks, passing notes and checking our text messages.
We were transfixed. The lesson flowed into us and awoke such dreams of potential and possibility. Certainly we couldn’t go out and conquer the world in such a literal way, but there really was no reason why any one of us couldn’t accomplish something nearly as great. If only we had the drive. If only we had the determination.
And the story ended. And the class ended. And we would wonder at how magnificently Mr. Murphy was able to bring history to life. Only, none of us was at all certain just where he found the corpse of Alexander to begin with.
@DL_Thurston, observing there’s no rule limiting us to one entry.
Ha – forgot my twitter tag again! @WendyStrain
Wendy Strain commented on Write Me!:
Ha – forgot my twitter tag again! @WendyStrain
Jenny hated high school when she was a teenager. She hated it even more now, running through the halls in the dark of night. What the hell had happened? The reunion was going fine when all of a sudden people were screaming and running in every direction. Jenny had stayed put until she looked to the middle of the emptying gymnasium and saw… It was horrible.
A mass of gooey flesh, once a person, was growing fast into a blob of blood red organs. Tentacles started growing out of it, flying at others who hadn’t made it out yet and grabbing them. It pulled them in, making its mass grow bigger.
Jenny had barely made it out of the gym before slamming a tentacle in the door. The lights flickered and went out around her and she came to a dead stop in the darkness.
Silence surrounded her and she couldn’t see a hand in front of her. She pulled her cell out of her pocket and unlocked the keys. A small blue light came to life from the phone and she held it in front of her as she continued walking down the hallway.
Without knowing how, she was on the floor. Her cheek hurt where she hit the hard linoleum and her phone had clattered down the hall out of her reach. As she tried standing up to get her phone, she felt the tentacle that had grabbed her pull her back.
She screamed louder than she had thought possible, hurting her throat and her ears. She was being dragged backward faster and faster. She tried grabbing on to anything, ripping her nails off in the process, and still never finding purchase.
The last thing she saw was the lines on the floor of the basket ball court as she was ingested.
@Kathleen_Doyle
The ginger hair hanging there like a handle in front of me nearly undid me. It begged to be sliced off, and that was just the beginning of what I wanted to do that girl. Not even nine in the morning on my first day of high school; already I’d fallen back on bad habits.
“Go to your happy place,” Dr. Biscuit had instructed.
Dr. Biscuit could kiss my ass — he didn’t have to sit here in the suffocating homeroom, staring at the back of Karen Rogers’ head, her graceful neck disappearing into the top of a designer top that probably cost more than my mother made in three months.
“Esther Adler,” Mrs. Gunther called from behind the tank of her desk, piled high with papers and books.
“Here,” I muttered, aware of the snickers hissing down each aisle of desks. Karen flipped her shiny hair over one shoulder and gave me that look. The one where she smirked and rolled her eyes. In my head, I vaulted over the desk and choked the life out of her. In real life, my eyes slid down to the scuffed, faded beige linoleum floor and held my breath, hoping Gunther would just move on.
“Richard Attenborough.”
Thank god. I eased my lungs, measuring out my breath so it wouldn’t be too loud in the complete silence that had enveloped the room until some douche from the left of me coughed out, “Dick!” That same tittering, only different, shifted from the front of the class to the back.
“Yeah.” Deep voice. Deep with a hint of…something new.
I turned to look — black hair shook out of dark eyes, and he stared right at me. A kindred spirit.
Twitter: @nicolewolverton
“You will be assigned to a teacher within the high school. The daughter of Mr. Amerbger will be in his class. It’s your job to get close to her. Offer her tutoring – she’s currently failing the class.”
“Understood.”
…
“Welcome to Mr. Harris, a student at – which college was it again?”
“Brown, sir. I’m studying – ”
“Ah, yes. Brown. My own alma mater,” the teacher cut him off with a wave of his hand, and Lee turned his attention to the class, zeroing in on the girl in the fourth row, his target. From a few feet away, he could already tell her entire personality. Vapid, completely oblivious to the world around her, and self-involved. He had been trained in reading people – she was one of the easiest stereotypes.
Already bored with his assignment – ever since the failed Gaji mission he had been given the most mundane and elementary missions – his eyes began to wander, landing on a girl a few feet from his target. She was bored with the teacher’s lecture as well, but the way she chewed on her pencil, the bright green scrunchie in her hair, the earbuds hidden beneath a curtain of dark blonde hair, they reminded him of someone – someone from his past.
“Ms. Kane!” The teacher screeched, and the girl sat up abruptly, pulling the headphones out of her ears.
Kane. The name brought back a dozen memories, and he lurched forward suddenly, eyes wild.
She had disappeared after senior year – he had just asked her to marry him after prom.
She had said yes.
She disappeared the next day, never to be heard from again, her family moving away shortly after. Everyone had whispered, but none had known what had truly happened.
But when the girl, Ms. Kane, looked up at the teacher, her green eyes – the same green as his – defiant, he understood.
I slammed into the lockers, the handles biting into my back. Loud rattling from the lockers filled the deserted hallway before fading.
“You think you can mess with me?”
I closed my eyes. “No.”
He shoved my chest again, but I was already against the lockers. “Look at me.”
I did. The gentle, handsome boy who was my friend had transformed into some sort of beast, his eyes wild and his nostrils flared.
“Why the fuck did you do that?”
“I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.” And I didn’t. But that didn’t mean I had nothing to feel guilty about.
He shook his head disgustedly. “You know what you did. You were supposed to be my friend.”
“Just tell me, man. We’ll work it out.”
“I’m off the team. Are you happy now? That’s what you wanted.” This was news to me.
“I don’t know why you’re off the team, goddammit. I didn’t want you on it because you got hurt. But I didn’t do anything about it, I swear.”
He looked at me, his eyes clearing, as if he was considering my words. He looked down the empty hallway then back to me. He raised an eyebrow. “You really don’t know what I’m talking about?”
“No, man. No. Tell me what you’re talking about.”
He laughed, a self-deprecating sound. He held back for a moment, suspended, then came at me. I thought he was attacking me again, though I still wouldn’t have fought him back. But he didn’t attack me. He kissed me.
Twitter: @a_skye
‘You’re leaving soon?’ Elo signed. It really was more rudimentary than that – ‘You go soon’ by the language he’d taught them, but Joran had been on the planet, and with this family-tribe long enough to pick out the personalities – especially of the old matriarch he spent most of his time with.
‘Yes, my star-‘
‘Your star is calling you, I know.’
She’d been finishing my sentences – even by sign – for a while now.
‘You are sad, Joran.’
*More than you can possibly know, Elo*, he thought.
‘Yes, I don’t… I don’t want to go.”
‘But you must, to bring news of us to your High School’
The word was strange to him now – he had invented it to differentiate what and how he had taught these near-sentients in his ‘low school’ to all the near magic he knew. As a Scout he could learn and tech, but he could not _save_.
‘So that we will not be forgotten.’
Joran, snapped his head up sharply to look into Elo’s almost hominid face.
“What?” He said out loud.
‘I know,’ She said. The Veil crosses our horizon tomorrow. I have long guessed – the elders have their own ideas – it might mean the end of us.’
BR-425 Supernova. The shockwave would obliterate this planet – this entire system – in 22 hours.
Elo’s face wavered in Joran’s vision. She reached out a wrinkled seven digit hand to wipe the tear from his eye.
‘It’s all right, my child. Go and tell our story so that we may live on.’
No more words signed or said. Joran watched from his viewport until the planet and its star were lost in the galactic sea.
@_Monocle_
He hated this town. It wasn’t his home town. He grew up a few miles away, this was merely where he had gone to high school. High school, what a terrible memory that created. He rarely ever came to town. He was happy he didn’t have to drive through to visit his folks. Today was different though. He was visiting his parents and happened to look at the local weekly newspaper.
Glena and Brenda Hillcrest are happy to announce the marriage of their daughter:
Laura Gene Hillcrest
to
Jason Alex Kline
His heart stopped.
“What’s wrong sweetheart?” His mother asked clearly seeing his ashen face.
“Did you see this?” He asked.
“Oh yeah, wasn’t that the girl you had a crush on in High School?” She asked innocently, not knowing that the crush had never gone away. He still lay awake a night imagining her, she was still the vision that he saw in his dreams.
“Yeah.” Was all he said. She didn’t recognize the other name, Jason, he was a bastard. If there was one person in the world that he hated, and still hated it was him. He visited him in his dreams too, in those dreams the only happy endings were Jason’s head lolling off to the side as he sliced through his neck, or fragments of skull and blood bursting from the side of Jason’s head as he shot him at close range. No ending could make up for years of ripped clothing, swirlies, wedgies, snake-bites and general humiliation.
He saw Jason in the picture, leering at him, as if to say, I really gotcha now.
For the first time in many years, he snuck out of his bedroom window, 32 years old and sneaking out like he was sixteen. He had the newspaper in his hand, he knew what he had to do.
The fireball of gasoline had exploded as the fiery newspaper lit the homemade bomb, now the school that he had so dispised was beggining to glow orange. Every window a flicker. This time, he won.
@D. Ryan Leask
It had been years since I had been here. Over twenty of them. Still it hadn’t changed. The houses were big and imposing, the driveways filled with luxury cars. The streets were lined with the same wrought iron fences, though they weren’t as shiny and new as they had been then. The trees were bigger. At least the ones that hadn’t died in the drought last summer. I wandered down the streets noticing a few signs of neglect, weeds growing in the sidewalk, bushes unpruned, which at one time would have caused severe actions by the homeowners association. I came to the end of the street and slowly raised my eyes. It was still there. The high school that had once tormented my life. My stomach clenched and rolled and I felt a little nauseous. I hated this place. Still after all the years the hounding and torments came back fresh to my mind. IT had taken so long for me to move on afterwards.
Time’s up! See you nerds, geeks, preppies, jocks, goths, and assorted non-conformist losers at 3:00 with the finalists!
😉
And now for the hard part….these look great.
older and wiser
eyes avert from each other
highschool reunion
@kaolinfire (because, hey, poetry 😉 )
Didn’t realize what you were getting yourself into, did you, Jeff? 😉
damn..I forgot to include my twit address: @stustoryteller