Ekphrastic Fiction Contest Winner (August 2021)
I simultaneously love and hate months like this. The stories were incredible this month! I am now convinced I made the right decision stepping out of the box and using this photo. I love that this piece generated enthusiasm and I was able to read so many creative interpretations. The part I hate is that it’s practically impossible to choose a winner. There are some amazingly talented writers participating in this contest. I hope those of you reading this, will look for my Honorable Mentions post later and reach out to any writer whose story you like. While I am forced to choose a winner, there were some pretty incredible entries for this month’s contest, and I hope everyone will see them.
The winner for this month is... @moonlightchess! Congratulations! This writer previously won this contest in October 2020 and September 2019. You can click on those links to see the previous winning pieces and read this month’s featured story below.
As a reminder, This untitled photograph was taken by RAYCHILL @shes-magic. She has a ton of uniquely captivating photographs posted, so if you like this piece, make sure to visit her page here!
On a Nola Night, Something Begins
It turned out that Nola was a dream. Lisette Marchande had long since Americanized her name to “Lisa’ for the sake of resumes, but booking a flight back down to the swamplands to take inventory of her mama’s old shotgun house on the quarter reminded her that New Orleans was as alluring and mysterious as that third pomegranate seed, tricking Persephone into a lifetime in shadowed places. Suddenly, it had been a week and jambalaya was simmerin’ on the stove and jazz was floating from her phone soft and silky as a hazy bayou night, and she was lost. Sweat trickling down her back and the tickling sweetness of beignet sugah rising hot from the counters of Cafe Du Monde turned the other world, the northern world, into some quickly-fading memory a hundred lifetimes gone.
“Mama’s business ain’t finished proper,” she vaguely remembered telling her boss, a crisply Cape Cod woman named Mary, over that same jazz-soaked air even as Louis Armstrong asked her if she “knew what it means, to miss New Orleans.” Even now, her carefully cultivated yankee airs had dissolved into the heat of a Nawlins summer evening, and she hung up just in time for the longing to hit her deep, some memory she’d long since forgotten until now, and she ventured into her dead mother’s decaying bedroom to root through her old things, an inventory for the guarantor of her estate. He was a beautiful creole man with autumn-brown skin and fox-gold eyes named Theodore Bissonette - Tay-oh-doure Bee-sew-NAY - and the faded red rug had gone a weak pink, adolescent lavender walls peeling like so much lost youth.
“Baby,” her letter began, when Lisette found the old black and white box adorned with curling filagree print, “if you are reading this, my time here is done. I leave to you all this decrepit nonsense, if you really want to stop there, dieu ne plaise, then take whatever little money I have left in this world and run to spend it on the down payment to some creaky thing, be it a car or a house or a man. But if I have raised you right, if your mind is sharp and curious still, take the black box under my bed to Monsieur Theodore Bissonette. He is the son of your daddy’s dearest friend, and he will guide you.”
The swamp had already had its way. The box, stuffed with strange herbs and stranger sigils scrawled heavy across dense ivory paper, left her enchanted and hungry. Monsieur Bissonette answered his phone on the first ring, as optimistic as she suddenly was. “Bonsoir, cherie.”
“What the hell is this? Mama talking about some magic nonsense? Some ancient prophecy thing out in Bellefontaine? Untold adventure awaits me if I only ask?”
“Oh, bien! Clever girl.” Theodore was delighted, unable to hide it. “We’ve been waiting for you. I’ll come get you at midnight.”
“For what?”
“Questions later, cherie. Tonight, only answers.”
