When You Wish Upon A Cloud
Contest rules Owl Canyon Press Short Story Hackathon 5 (2023) [AKA Tag-Teamathon]: Owl Canyon Press provides the 1st paragraph and two alternate 50th paragraphs with writing team co-authors taking turns writing a common/shared story from paragraphs 2 through 49 (thus the tag-team handle) and then spinning off two versions using the two alternative 50th paragraphs. Finalist Published in the 2023 Owl Canyon Press Anthology: Nobody Left to Blame. When You Wish Upon a Cloud By Graham Elder and Laura Cody No coverage, not even one bar; the battery was dead anyway. It was still daytime, but there was an overcast and the sky had a perfectly even dullness, so there was no…
“Curtains”
Graham Elder 19 June, 2022 – 5 min read Foreword This story was submitted as part of the inaugural New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) fiction writing contest last year. The Contest rules were very specific. No more than 1500 words, and contestants must either: Write about the doctor behind the curtain or invent the back story of the patient you didn’t meet until it was too late. I decided to try and accomplish both. Alas, I didn’t win, but it was a fun effort. “Curtains” All doctors have at least one case they wish they could take back – a do-over. A case that sits deep in the pit of their stomachs…
Unstoppable You
by Laura Cody May 27, 2021 – 4 min read Featured in The Best of CafeLit, vol 11; 2022 You linger an extra five minutes over your second cup of coffee, luxuriating in the quiet house after what virtually amounted to fourteen months of prison time in G-pop. With friends, you pay dutiful lip-service to the hidden blessings of the pandemic, the silver linings behind the sorrows. You say it taught you to slow down, to enjoy simple pleasures – a home-cooked meal, a jigsaw puzzle, a socially-distanced stroll in fading sunlight. You don’t mention how your house shrunk to the dimensions of a tuna can, how your husband set up…
The Little Killer
Graham Elder January 15, 2021 – 4 min read I was born of a freak mutation and evolved quickly to become a great terror. I am Anoroc Suriv, and this is my tale of global domination. How one became many and infiltrated all points of the compass rose, sending the world into a death frenzy with fear lurking around every corner. Huddled together behind walls of every kind, people trembled at my passing as they waited for rescue that might never come. My story begins in a small town, like any other small town. My first taste of blood was animal. The type of animal is inconsequential. What’s important is…
