Announcing the two winners from the Punching Summer Time Clocks challenge! These fourth round finalists are the last to join the winners circle of this righteous series we call the Sundress Summer Flash Showdown. The winners who have made it into this powerful, published collective will go on to compete for the majestic grand prize…
OF FIVE SUNDRESS TITLES OF THEIR CHOOSING AND THE SHOWCASING OF THEIR STORIES ON THE BLOG!
Congratulations to Amy Sayre Baptista for her first prize story, “Top Down.”
Let’s see what honored judge Adam Prince drew from Amy’s flash fiction:
It was hard to decide between these two stories (“Top Down” and the runner-up, “Housekeeping.”) Both offered deeply engaging reads. In the end, I went with “Top Down” for its massive whimsy and for the fact that it has a complete narrative arc in such a short space. It’s a very adept piece of writing that reveals information at just the right moment every time and really makes each word count.
The story gets into the psyche of young, hormonal Trevor, doomed to spend the summer managing his father’s Segway track in Branson, Missouri. “Some girls might dig it,” he tells himself, already knowing they won’t. And yet he continues to dream of “long legs slowly passing by, legs of every race, color and creed. Legs he was responsible for watching.” That last sentence is endemic of the writer’s skill with quirky, cutting short sentences. The sentence also gets at Trevor’s touching innocence, all the more striking when it comes smack up against a startlingly cold attitude toward his own mother. Really an intriguing piece of work!
Great job Amy! She earned the privilege of naming her very own FIREFLY FARMS CHICKEN! She describes her choice as “empowering and Portuguese.”
Introducing…Furiosa Fernandes!!!!!!
Sundress Publications would also like to congratulate Jennifer Schomburg Kanke for being the final runner-up with her powerful story entitled, “Housekeeping.” Great job Jennifer!
All the folks at The Wardrobe as well as Sundress Publications would like to thank all the contributors, judges, and minds that allowed this summer’s coolest flash fiction contest to become a reality. We continue to be humbled by the outpouring of talent evidenced by submissions, cherishing the amazing artistic community of literary souls that keep us inspired. And don’t forget to check out our final challenge for our special selection of winning Summer Flash Showdown writers, coming your way soon.
Top Down
by Amy Sayre Baptista
When Trevor’s dad bought an event track, Trevor thought: finally. The break I need. Ascending the social ladder of Calvary Christian High School is now possible. But when twenty-four new Segways arrived, his heart sank. Segways are for old people, drunks, and kids. Mega-church students are a tough crowd. On the other hand, the track was on the main drag through Branson, and he was the summer manager. Some girls might dig it. Trevor imagined long legs slowly passing by, legs of every race, color and creed. Legs he was responsible for watching. Hope ended when his father revealed the billboard: Branson Segway: Feel the Excitement!
I’m finished in this town, Trevor thought. Social death. Weapon of choice: shame.
The first Saturday at work, a yellow VW Beetle with a large German Shepherd in the back, pulled into the empty parking lot. Trevor had already mastered talking on his phone and rounding the track on Segway #3, which he was doing as the woman stepped out of her car. Even from a distance, Trevor noticed she was beautiful.
“Customer gotta go,” he said cutting off his mother in mid-sentence. Trevor leaned forward achieving maximum speed before lightly pulling to a stop. Everything on her was long: legs, hair, lashes. He sighed.
“I’m Ashley,” the woman said, “I need some help”.
“At Branson Segway, the customer is always first,” Trevor croaked from a dry mouth.
“I need to rent the track today.”
“Today is open!”
The dog barked from the car.
“Hang on.” She went to the car and returned with the dog.
“How many machines?”
“One,” she said.
The dog nuzzled Trevor’s hand.
“I always wanted a dog.”
His mother groomed dogs, but refused to let him have one. Absolutely not, she said every time he asked, I work in hair all day, I don’t want my house full of it.
“Just one? You want the whole track for an hour for one machine?”
“Yes.”
“That’s like $200 dollars, miss.”
“I’ll give you $100 and you can keep the dog. He never took to me anyway.” She started to cry.
“Ma’am?” Trevor said.
“Look kid, in an hour, my husband, who bought this dog, who bought these boobs, he’s gonna come down that street in a convertible with his new girlfriend, a dog groomer. They think they’re a secret. I want him to see me riding this track in the bare skin I was born with. The joke is on him, now. ” She pulled a bottle of baby oil and a stack of bills from her Louis Vuitton bag. “Help me oil up, keep the track clear, and it’s all yours, ok?”
For a moment, Trevor could not speak.
“The groomer on Ashland?” Trevor asked.
“The same,” Ashley said, “know her?”
“Yes,” Trevor said. Feeling as if the world had finally righted itself.
“Yes to the rental or the groomer?”
“Both,” he said.
Ashley loosened the straps to her sundress, “She’s why he bought that dog in the first place. Cleanest goddamn dog in the county,” she said.
Trevor poured oil in his palm realizing the two things he wanted most in world were about to happen: real live breasts, and a dog. A dog even his mother could not refuse.
Amy Sayre Baptista lives and writes in Chicago, Illinois. She is a co-founder of the community arts program, Plates&Poetry. Her most recent publications can be found in The Butter, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, and Chicago Noir.
Housekeeping
by Jennifer Schomburg Kanke
Anything can call itself a resort, but that doesn’t mean it is. Gulf Winds was a place with such aspirations. Slap the word “aromatherapy” on the soap and shampoo and even the most acrid chemicals are high class. Refill Jameson bottles with Old Crow and the whole bar’s top shelf. Who took the time to look beyond the labels? The management changed every six months, which Tammy liked. Just as someone was starting to ask questions— about her past, about her scar, about the difference between the name on her tag and the one on her checks— the owner would fire them and get someone else in there who didn’t know he was so ass and that the place was crawling with Ohioans who didn’t realize North Florida wasn’t really Florida.
The humidity was relentless, like her night terrors. Both pooled sweat at the nape of her neck and made her feel like a pit bull had fallen asleep across her chest, each breath an act of survival and will. She had gotten used to them back at home, but she somehow figured they’d disappear out in the world, that time would chip away at them until she slept peacefully through the night. She had been wrong. There was nothing she could do about the terrors, but for the heat she’d hide out in the guest rooms, taking an hour in each. She’d smell their perfumes and touch the soft cottons of their sundresses and cover-ups. Sometimes she’d open a wallet, if there was a wallet sitting around. She never took anything though, Tammy was no thief, although she’d told a guest she was once after being caught in the act.
“Did you just take money?” The woman had been quietly reading on the balcony, Tammy hadn’t noticed her.
“Yes, Ma’am. Sorry, Ma’am.” She took five dollars from the pocket of her uniform, a tip from the college boys in 215, and put it in the woman’s wallet. This was easier than explaining she’d been looking at a picture of the woman and her daughters, all gap-toothed smiles on some sunlit beach. Of all the things Tammy regretted, leaving her children was the one that haunted her the most. You’re always supposed to take the children, aren’t you? Or stay for them? Isn’t that what good women do?
Beth would be going on twenty now and, unless the last decade had changed her, she was a mix of her daddy’s meanness and Tammy’s own instinct for self-preservation. She knew the girl had been looking for her, calling around to all the hotels she used to work at. It wouldn’t be long before she found Gulf Winds. It would be better if Tammy found her first and…what? Explained? Begged forgiveness? Knocked her daddy’s demons right out of her? Nothing seemed possible. Instead Tammy would do what Tammy had always done. She’d pack a bag of the lemon verbena toiletries from her cart, buy a new hair dye (maybe red this time, she hadn’t been red for awhile), and find another run down resort town where the air conditioning was always pumping and nobody asked any questions.
Jennifer Schomburg Kanke is a visiting faculty member at Florida State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, Fugue, and Stirring. She previously served as the poetry editor for the Southeast Review and was an editor at Quarter After Eight.
