Seven Eleven

November's Very Short Story Contest Winner

by

When she walked into the convenience store in Whitehaven, the substitute teacher didn’t realize the man standing behind the cash register had just killed the clerk who had been standing behind the cash register. Wanting and needing a refill for her coffee, she wondered if the coffee was fresh, fresh and hot, just as the red shiny sign advertised. He took the still-warm stolen gun from his book bag, pointed it at her head, and made the shot. The bullet, just as bullets are wont to do when they scrape helmets in modern wars, did not drive itself into her head but instead made a path around the skeletal bone of her skull, ripping up her hair and skin like a metal plow through cracked playground dirt. She would be in the hospital for two months, and after she switched the part in her hair, not a fashion choice, the substitute teacher received a written reprimand for leaving her math class, her desk, and the building without permission.

Before the substitute teacher walked into the convenience store, the boy didn’t realize someone might mistake him for the clerk who was supposed to be standing behind the cash register. He took a quick glance at the dead man, the blood from whose chest was creeping, with some urgency, with surging red wetness, toward his tennis shoes. The blood traveled around his Black Sabbath book bag he received for his fifteenth birthday, for which, if it got messed up, dirty, or lost, his mother would kill him. He heard the young woman say, “Good morning, is the coffee fresh? Fuc . . .” He waved the gun at her, and she backed up into the door, triggering the tinny gurgling bell to ring when someone, anyone, walked in or, except her, out. He pointed the gun at someone he almost recognized, and thinking he had fewer than no choices, he fired again. He knew he could do it because he already had.

But the still man on the floor and the woman, still writhing on the floor, still did not allow the cash register to open without the gasping whispered hint of arbitrary numbers in a correctly coded sequence. And the twitchy man with the itchy touch, who was an ill-fated blond boy with a borrowed gun, had nothing else to do but go back to school to turn in the English homework I assigned to him in class the day before.

Natalie Parker-Lawrence is a writer, editor, and teacher. Her essays have appeared in Slice of Life, Prime Number, Unlikely Stories, Barefoot Review, The Commercial Appeal, The Pinch, and other publications. She has produced eight plays and is a founder of Holly Street, a local podcast production company for writers.

SHORT AND SWEET (or not-so-sweet), the Very Short Story Contest welcomes entries of up to 750 words, maximum. Writers are encouraged to incorporate the city into their work. Winning stories are published in Memphis and archived on memphismagazine.com. The Very Short Story Contest recognizes ten winning entries annually, every month except February and August. The contest is presented by Novel, Memphis’ newest independent bookstore, where each winning author will be honored with a $200 gift certificate. To submit: fiction@memphismagazine.com