Short Story in the Winning Style

Hardingfele and I entered a contest on Public Radio in which you are to write a story of no more than 600 words using the first line they supply. Unfortunately I cannot post this story on my blog yet since by the rules it cannot be posted anywhere else, but neither of us has high hopes of winning after spending last night reading the past winners. These stories all had an underlying theme which I would characterize as “suckiness.” Let me attempt to demonstrate using as the first sentence a piece of spam that Hardingfele received today:

My name is Eutropio Benedito a retired Portuguese Oil Merchant, Your reply is needed. Oh, you do not reply? Then I will call you Dulcinea of El Toboso.

I remember when El Feo came to town, this was when we had the Lenten processions on Good Friday with men dressed in black robes with towering hoods, like so many opponents of the Ku Klux Klan. El Feo was a very ugly man with only one tooth, and he smelled of motor oil and damp forests. Nobody knew where he had come from, but this did not stop people from talking, as it never does. I saw where he went, however. I kept this knowledge secret in my chest like a squirrel hoarding nuts, but it clawed at me as if the squirrel were trapped in my throat, trying desperately to escape.

The rains came early that year. They poured from the heavens and washed away the signs of struggle, the stains of blood. There was no more evidence of crimes crying to Heaven for vengeance. There was only what I had seen.

Sometimes a woman can be a terrible thing. She can speak loving words with those soft, lying lips and then use those same lips to kiss another man. Sometimes we see things we were never meant to see, and the vision burns into our memory, remaking us. Am I a saint or a sinner? Who is to stand in judgment of El Feo? I cannot say I would not have done the same.

When the moon rose full in June, El Feo left forever, and I will never be the same.

Famous Hat