2.04.2012

#WeekendWritercize 4 - In Title

Welcome to the 4th edition of the #WeekendWritercize competition!
Join in and spread the word to friends and family! 
Badges and coffee up for grabs this week.

(...and if you haven't had a chance to read entries from the last three weeks, check them out on the #WeekendWritercize tab - talent abounds)

writercize: Write the opening to a novel with the following title:
Five O'Clock Shadows.
Any genre ok. "Opening" may be interpreted as opening sentence, paragraph or scene. Make me want to read more!

To enter the competition, leave your entry as a comment below. Be sure to include your Twitter handle and link to your blog or website. Tweet and Facebook your own as well as fellow entries using the hashtag #WeekendWritercize.

Since this blog is used by teachers and students, I kindly request that you abstain from profanity and gratuitous violence. (In other words, keep it PG-13.) If your story can't be told without, just provide a link to your post on your own website along with a disclaimer. Your entry will still be considered.

Competition closes at 11:59 p.m. Sunday night (Pacific time) - no entries accepted after that. Winner announced Monday.

This week's winner and honorable mention(s) will receive a #WeekendWritercize Winner badge to proudly display on their website, and to sweeten the deal, a $5 Starbucks card is at stake!

Thanks and good luck!

10 comments:

  1. The rain was coming down hard. There was a light coming from the living room of the house. He really was home. Good. She'd better stash the car down the street.

    As she turned the engine off, she wondered why she had come. Was Harry worth this trouble? What if he isn't alone? She reached into her purse and felt the cold steel of the Taurus. She was prepared for that. She opened the door and stepped out in to the deluge.

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  2. Paul's Mexican friends call him Pablo. Tonight he sits in a booth alone, counting all that are left of his friends: 4 sausage links and 3 pancakes and 2 sunny-side ups draped over 1 pile of hash browns. Paul thought he was hungry when he ordered the "Tremendous Twelve" breakfast, but instead of eating, he counts and recounts with welling, glazing eyes. "Like bowling pins", he thinks, "4+3+2+1 is 10." The waitress comes by with a plate of sliced toast and he looks desperately in her eyes, "There are only ten items here." She looks at him, tired, and scornfully, and puts the plate down.
    "Now there's fourteen, cause the toasts is cut."

    "It's worse than I thought" Paul whispers, and begins to quietly weep. As she walks away shaking her head behind Paul's back the whole meal becomes a sad cold blur. Fumbling with his phone, Paul dares again to point his red eyes at that last text message. It doesn't matter that he can't see it, nor that it's in Spanish: Corre por tu vida. He knows that it says "Run for your life!"

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  3. Five O'Clock Shadows

    The three latino men leaned against the pitted graffiti-covered brick wall. They seemed to be a part of the scenery, blending in and hardly moving.

    What was unusual was the time of day. Just after noon on a Thursday. This was a seedy part of town, but it was usually busy at this time of day. An elderly man walked out of his apartment building across the street, but when he saw the three, he quickly went back in.

    Yes, something was getting ready to go down. I reached for the CB. I would need back-up.

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  4. It was the end of his shift and Dan stepped out of the building. Streaks of darkness fell from the telephone poles onto the ground behind them. The city had a five o'clock shadow and so did Dan, but what he was about to do, was far darker than any shadow - on the sidewalk or on his face. Dan was a detective, but tonight he would not be wearing his badge.

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  5. It was late in the afternoon, long shadows starting to creep across the orchard. Honestly, when I think back on it now, I don't know how I even noticed it. I couldn't take my eyes off it when I saw it tucked against the trunk of one of the trees. I hardly realized that I was moving toward it until I bent to touch it. My fingers brushed over the rough surface as they closed around the object and picked it up.

    I didn't know what I held then, but something about it still made me think: "Finally, it's mine."

    100 words
    @AuroraLee

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  6. In the light of day, she is confident and feels ‘safe.’ Safety is a relative term, though, hmm?

    In reality, I’ve been following her all day. When she went to the market. When she walked around the lake in her provocative work-out clothes. As she stopped in the coffee shop to have a latte with a friend.

    I could have put my hands on her many times today, but I waited for dusk . . . because that’s when she’s most affected. And I do so love adrenaline and the dilated pupils that go along with it. I can almost smell it on the air; certainly I can see the evidence of it in her stiff posture and the furtive glances she shoots in every direction. She’s like a frightened rabbit, and I am her trapper.

    Any moment now, she’ll pass me. Taking the gloves out of my coat pocket, I slip them over my hands in preparation. It won’t do to leave fingerprints or DNA evidence behind, now will it? I lean back against the stone building, hunched against the cold, watching all the cattle scurry by on their way here or there. My breath looks like smoke curling up into the still, crisp air.

    Ah, there she is. She passes me, walking quickly with her hands stuffed in the pockets of her long red coat. I fall in behind her, allowing a few people as a buffer between us at first. It doesn’t matter anyway; she has no idea who I am. A little hair dye, colored contacts, new clothes, and different affectations have see to that.

    Eventually, she has to turn off the main road where the bright lights, cars, and people are. As destiny has it, no others turn onto her barely lit street with us. My rubber soled shoes whisper quietly on the sidewalk, and she’ll never know I’m here unless she turns around—and she does, her wide eyes barely able to make out my form in the gloom.

    Her tense posture relaxes slightly when she sees it’s me—after all, I’m the benign looking gentleman who has walked down the street behind or in front of her for the past several weeks. I allowed her to witness me entering an apartment building a few doors down from hers several times. Now she’s complacent and feels a false sense of security when I’m around, just as planned. She always was so predictable.

    Silly girl.

    @SarahAisling
    409 #WIP500 words

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  7. Thank you to all the talented participants! To see who WON and why, click here: http://writercize.blogspot.com/2012/02/weekendwritercize-4-winner-mike-miller.html

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