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Rules | Entry Summaries | First Round Rankings | Elimination Round!

Separation Anxiety

Redoubling her efforts, she ran as fast as she could, hoping to outrun the being that, in her mind, plagued her every step. Night, and the shadows that lurked within its vast cape, could make anyone believe that she was mere moments away from being obliterated at the hands of an unknown enemy. But for the sound of her feet hitting the pavement with each stride she took, there was silence. It was this silence that put a fear in her so primordial that her heart pounded as if to leap out of its confinement and her lungs swelled until she determined those, too, might very well burst. Or her legs, which were strong from her years spent running regularly, would simply give out. But none of this happened as she streamed around street corners, looking for some sort of sanctuary. And then it appeared. A back entrance to a shop that she knew only because she had traversed these alleyways in her younger years, a door cracked open in a miniscule way, a light source from inside the door, a ray of hope in the dark of night.

The duration of her flight was a mere fraction in time, though it had seemed like an eternity. Why did it have to be her, she wondered. And why on this night? Of all nights, this was supposed to be a special one. Just she and her mom, whom she had not seen in several years. She always had a soft spot for the underrepresented in the world and her country, in particular, always felt some kind of compassion for those who, in her mind, were forced to commit acts they normally would not have committed. But now, as she gasped for every bit of oxygen she could get that the atmosphere permitted, she realized that maybe, just maybe, she had erred in her thoughts and that she should have been more realistic to the ways of the world and those within it who have no regard for life, their own or others. The fear that would paralyze many kept her going.

She looked around the room. There was not anything out of the ordinary, she thought. It was just a pawn shop with all kinds of things one would expect to see, old trinkets, some guitars hanging from the walls, outdated televisions, jewelry, and even some board games she remembered having played with her parents as a child. Those years were long gone, however, and she did not have time to dwell, or even reflect, on the past. The air in the room was as damp and chill as it had been outside, which must have been a result of the door staying ajar for as long as it had. There had been a violent storm disrupting the calm earlier in the day. She wondered how long it had been that way and if anyone were even still here. Not knowing how close her pursuer was at present, she did not dare say a word for fear she would give away her location. Instead, she closed the door behind her, looked for a light switch, and a phone, and prayed to a God about whose existence she remained skeptical ever since she learned of the Holocaust as a young girl, that this cruel pursuer would not find her here, not ever.

She shut the door and made absolutely sure that it did not make any noise upon its meeting the frame. Only hinges in need of lubrication made any sound. A light switch could be seen about ten paces away, and she glided toward it and turned it off. She walked toward the counter and sat down behind it, hugging her knees to her chest, not even daring to find a phone, not even needing to since she had her cellular one, she realized. When she had to run, she did not even think about the fact that it was in her pants pocket. How easy it would have been to dial 911 while running, she thought. Easier than trying to find some kind of refuge, probably. Moments of profound irrationality were displayed, she knew, by those in extreme situations functioning under extreme duress.

Knowing that her mom would be worried about her and also knowing that her mom would know what to do, she decided to call, not concerning herself with who might be waiting outside the door for just the slightest sound that would alert him to her presence nearby. She was fairly certain she had created a good distance between them, but she remembered those wild eyes, the hair sticking out in all directions, white, long, and unkempt, though, surprisingly, face newly-shaven. Who could this person be? And why was he chasing her? Nothing about it made any sense, her being approached by someone claiming to be her father. Her dad had been dead for almost ten years now, and this person, whose face she remembered clearly, was not her dad. He must have had her confused with someone else, that or it was simply a ploy to get her to come with him, a rather flimsy one, though, given that most people knew the mortal status of their biological parents. But when he grasped her arm with such force, such strength for a man his age, she knew she had to run. A well-placed kick to one of his knees was enough to loosen his grip so she could get away, and she did not look back. There was no one else on the street to whom she could ask for help, as it was late, almost ten o'clock, and she was on the way to meet her mom at her house near the town's downtown district.

As she sat and waited for her mom to pick up, she swore she could hear the door beginning to move just slightly, but she did not know if it were just the wind increasing in intensity just a bit or if someone really were trying to get in.

"Hello," said the voice on the other end.

"Mom, it's me. I'm in trouble," she said with urgency.

"Trouble, Jill, what kind of trouble? Are you all right?" Her mom's voice turned to grave concern for her daughter.

"I don't know, really. I have to keep my voice down. Someone claiming he was Dad came up to me on the street as I was walking to your place from the hotel and then grabbed my arm when I refused to talk any longer." It used to be safe to walk the streets as a young girl even at this time of night.

"What! Dad's been gone for ten years. You and I both know that. He was killed in a plane crash. Where are you? How are you!" she asked, urgency in her voice.

"I'm fine, I think. I'm in a shop downtown. Jim's Pawn Shop," she said. "I remember this place from so many years ago. The back door was open and there was even a light left on, but I haven't seen any sign of anyone just yet."

"Have you called the police?" her mom asked.

"No, actually, you're the first one I called. I should have called the police, I know. I'm kind of not operating with all of my wits right now." A trace of light laughter escaped her voice box.

"Well, I'll come there right away, and I will call the police and let them know where you are. Baby, you hang tight and I will be right there, okay?"

"Okay, I'll be right here. Thanks, Mom for saving me. Again." There was a time she would never forget when, as a little girl, a man had trapped her inside of a bathroom in a department store when she was eight years old. The man had been following her throughout the store, waiting for his chance for mother and daughter to separate. When her mom, only a small distance away, heard her cry for help, she immediately burst into the bathroom, smashing the door right against the perpetrator's head and shoulder, knocking him back and allowing daughter to pass through the gap that was created between them. Little Jill would always remember that incident. Unfortunately, before her mom could get real help, the man had fled, but she had prevented something potentially awful from happening to her daughter that day.

"That's what moms are for, and besides, I can't let anything happen to my only daughter. Will see you soon." She hung up.

Just then, she heard a noise from above. It sounded as if something fell off the wall perhaps and onto the floor. Whatever it was, it sent goose bumps up and down her arms. She could then hear a door open and accompanying footsteps walking down a staircase and, she swore, a vague voice in the background. Someone was in here! There must have been stairs that she did not see as she came in. Peeking around the counter, she looked out the glass front door and window. There was nothing but night and the street lamps that illuminated the buildings. Who knew what lurked out there, watching her, waiting for her to make one wrong move? She was not confident that her pursuer had given up his chase, but someone else was going to find out soon that he had an intruder in his shop, that is, unless she could hide herself impeccably. That is, unless she could get out of this building before her mother showed up.

The night was spinning rapidly out of control, she decided.


He sits at the table eating his breakfast. Eggs, bacon and a glass of orange juice. He chews his food noisily enough that the others sitting close enough to him to hear are visibly disturbed. A periodic, pronounced cough into a handkerchief would have been annoying to most who have the good fortune to sit near him, but when he examines one of his projections, it is enough to make one of the small restaurant's patrons move to another seat, far away from this older gentleman.

He does not make eye contact with the lady who moves. Instead, he files it away in his mind as proof of others' dislike of him. Never one to be too self-critical, lest he really discover the truth, he is resigned to the credo of ‘it must be someone else's fault that I am unhappy.' All familiar ties are missing from his life, either by natural causes or by choosing to no longer associate with him because of his incorrigible behavior. If politics is largely about personality, it is no wonder that he has never won an election. He had tried in his younger years to attain important positions within his city's local government, but no one wanted to work alongside him, and word had already spread about how he liked to frequent adult establishments and drank from one end of twilight to the other. While public service is not his calling, he has no shortage of criticism for those in it.

As he eats his breakfast, he simultaneously stares out the window. The sun seems to shine right into his irises. His old-style, plastic, large-framed glasses, however, create a glossy shield before his eyes so that no one can begin to see into them. It is as if, for the moment, there are no eyes behind the lenses, so distorted by the sun's rays are they. But he does have eyes, and the ladies from his younger days attested that they were the kind of blue eyes a girl could find herself forgetting who she was if she looked into them for too long. But those days are over, and now the ladies who once used to laugh at his stories and fawn over him are only turned off by that cough and abrasive personality that has overtaken him.

"Miss," he says roughly as his waitress passes by. "I'm out of orange juice and have been so for over five goddamn minutes. When I was your age and if I would have so neglected a customer, I would have been fired," he says while laughing, as if to take away the sting from his criticism just a bit. Meanwhile, all eyes are focused upon this poor waitress, who is probably only working this job to pay for her college education.

"Sir," she says in a soothing southern voice, "I really am sorry about your wait. It's just that we've been rather busy this morning and one of our girls called in sick. I do apologize." He looks her up and down slowly, because he can, her sleek white, firm legs shining in the morning sun, her brown hair put up so perfectly, a portion of it falling over one shoulder so delicately, and her ample mouth separated just enough makes him long for the days when he could perform in ways that would have made her wild with ecstasy. Of this, he is certain.

"Well," he says, "I guess it's all right, it's just that things have changed these days. The South isn't the South anymore. People just don't care." His eyes met hers intensely.

"What do you think, young lady, of this president we have running our country?" he asks, expecting her response to be of equal measure to the opinion he holds.

"Oh, I think being a president must be hard. You never can make everybody happy. I like him a lot, though, for a lot of reasons," she explains.

"Name one," he says harshly, eyes down turned, stuffing his mouth with a fork full of scrambled eggs, several egg particles escaping as he chews.

"He was great after 911 and you could really tell he cared about those poor people in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. Even though he's done some things some of us around here aren't too proud of, I like to think that he's a good guy overall."

"Ha ha! You know, there's probably someone out there who thought the same thing about Adolph Hitler, too."

Noticeably bothered by the man's insistence and arrogance, she decides to stop talking about this topic.

"Let me get your juice. Hold on and I'll be right back." This poor young girl is a mere insect in a spider's web. There are those people in the world who make it their number one aspiration to suck everything that is good from others before they are finally done with their meal. He has become, perhaps has always been, one of these people. His is on the outside very gruff and abrupt, on the inside, cool, calm, and calculating. He enjoys toying with others, observing their reactions, knowing what kind of reactions he will elicit, waiting to continue the game with others along the way. Years spent without a companion have made him hard. Harder. More mean. It has been years since he felt the warm touch of a woman.
Almost as he is about to say something disparaging to this waitress who has been only so kind to him, he changes his focus. A face, a beautiful face at that, puts him in a stone-still position. It is the face of his only daughter whom he had lost to cancer only five years ago. The face of the only person who ever even called to see how he was doing or sent him a birthday card or even, when she could, traveled an almost thousand-mile distance to see him. Make no mistake about it, it is she.

His waitress returns with a full glass of orange juice.

"There you go, sir. Please, again, my apologies for your wait." She turns to go.

"Young lady," he said in a tone that most would have found offensive but one that she had grown accustomed to working at such a place, "if you have a minute, please have a seat. I'd like to tell you something."

This girl could not have possibly conceived in her wildest of imaginations what it is that he is going to lay before her. What will come out of his mouth. The way things are going, it will be another one of his projectiles. But though another strong cough does come, that is all there is. She sits down, slowly and reluctantly.

"I can't stay too long. Other customers will complain about their service," she laments politely, thinking he will gladly keep her from them while complaining about her own lack of service.

"Right now, I'm the only one in this place who is of any concern to you. Know that," he says, looking down upon her through his glasses, as an aristocrat surely regards a peasant.

She almost stands up but just wants to indulge the gentleman, a loose term at best, in hopes that he will leave soon so that she and her customers can go back to having a normal, relaxing, as relaxing as serving double the number of people to which you are accustomed can be, time. She feels badly for her customers and wonders where this man has come from, what planet, even.

"Do you see that girl outside? Right there?" he points, and her head turns. Her hair is a little shorter than he remembered his daughter having, the nape of her neck exposed, though she has the same walk, same build, the same kind of style even.

"Yes, I see her," she says. She is a very attractive lady, who must be in her middle thirties.

"That's my daughter," he says and reclines just a bit, folding his arms and smiling.

"Oh, really? Why don't you invite her in?" she asks, excitement in her voice.

"Are you crazy?!" he booms. As if there are not enough people already looking in their direction, his wild outburst commands more eyes to turn their way.

"It was not a question meant to be anything other than friendly. I'm sorry if you took it the wrong way," she profusely apologizes.

"You just don't understand," he says as he uncrosses his arms and reaches for his orange juice. "It's my daughter, all right, but she died several years ago. Cancer. God-awful disease. Pray you don't get it!" He drinks. "You know you people here should really serve alcohol. Now, I have to wait until lunch before I can get a real drink."

"Well, I'm sorry if I don't understand, but if your daughter is dead, then how can that be her?" she asks.

"She," he corrects her. "The schools don't even teach young people the right way to speak anymore. It's a shame." He shakes his head, strands of white hair moving freely.

The waitress becomes ever more curious, and those who can actually hear enough of the story to make out its details become more attuned to the pair close by.

His daughter about whom he speaks stops only briefly on the opposite side of the street to investigate one of the buildings. Upon looking at the sign on the door, she turns back toward the street so that he can make out her face clearly enough and then turns to walk out of his view.

"I don't really know, but there's no doubt in my mind that is she. God works in strange ways, doesn't He?" he asked the girl sitting next to him. "You can get back to work now. You go and make some boy jealous." It is his best attempt at a compliment. He leaves his payment on the table.

Everyone in the restaurant, that is, everyone except this older man it seems, feels compassion and sympathy—and dread, for they would not have wanted to be in her shoes—for this young girl. She has merely stumbled into the wrong situation at the wrong time, though she will probably remember every detail for the rest of her life.

"Before I go, sir, I would like to ask where you are from." You have a very pronounced, and, might I say, dignified southern accent, but I've never seen you around this area before."

He obliges with an abridged history of his life. "I grew up in the South, spent most of my boyhood days in rural Arkansas, moved to Tennessee when I was ten, and have spent the rest of my time in South Carolina, right on the coast. Lincoln, whom I will never forgive for terrorizing the Southern way of life," he says shaking his finger at the pretty waitress, "probably said it best when he told a biographer that his story was a tale from the annals of the poor. I had nothing when I was your age and younger, and now I feel as though I have nothing left, though I will never want for money, not another day so long as I live! I long to be close to the ocean so that I can look out at its great expanse during my last days, so I can know how big is God's world and how meaningless and empty it is all at the same time. Make your own meaning and fill your life up full with everything you can, darlin', everything you can." He coughs into his handkerchief.

The waitress, after spending more time than she knows she should have with this stranger, gets up and attends to her customers. Not one was upset with her, and that morning she made much more than normal in gratuities.


The door shutting behind him, the old man steps out into the brilliant light of the outside world and pulls his light jacket around him tightly. Though spring has just begun to settle in on this quiet, tucked-away southern town, it is still a bit chilly for his taste. He has been traveling in the northern United States for a couple of months, seeing places where he had extended family at one point in his life, some unknown relatives and some better known. He has traveled as far west as the Colorado River before it crosses into Utah (he could not ever compel himself to set foot in the state where Joseph Smith, Jr. founded Mormonism; as far as he was concerned, Smith got just what he deserved in his final days) and as far east as Ohio, taking in the wondrous sight of Lake Erie before finally turning his compass south for what might be his last return trip home. He is not getting any younger and he does not enjoy being far from home anymore. It will only be a matter of time, he thinks, before he will have to pay someone to take care of him, not because he is feeble and frail, but because he knows his mind is going, forgetting things he knows it should remember. And it frustrates him beyond belief.

He studies her for quite some time. How to approach her? He is unsure of himself. For what is the first time in quite a long time. He does not know how to act. He wants a drink. But a drink these days is at a dive on the road, typically. He will have to wait until he arrives home before he can go back to his morning gin and tonic. This orange juice nonsense is for a much younger man, one who cares about impressing a young lady. But then again, he does not want to make a negative impression on this one. He thinks about Will Rogers' saying, the sentiment of never getting a second chance to make a first impression. He will remain guarded and watch where she goes and will wait for the right time to approach her. What will he even say? He wonders.


"Jill Summerfield, is that you?!" a familiar voice from behind the counter exclaimed.

Almost before she could even look up, a great bear of a man came rushing up to her to give her a fierce embrace. Standing almost six-and-a-half-feet tall was Don, "Brickyard" as his friends so affectionately referred to him, Wallace, who had owned and operated a candle and stationary store—of all things—for the last thirty-odd years. Called ‘Candles and Calligraphy', a name chosen by Don himself, C ... C was the preeminent candle and stationary store for miles around. Some in the community poked fun at Don for, on the one hand, seeming so masculine because of his build and gait, but employed in "women's work." He was a family man but also a tough guy, worthy of starring or playing even a supporting role in any Martin Scorsese film. Don never seemed to mind much, and anyway, no one was going to tell him to his face that he thought he was playing for the other team because no one wanted to see just how far a punch from his long, stocky arms might launch him.

Wriggling out from his clutches, though certainly not as easily as a bar of soap slips between wet hands, Jill managed to regain her balance and breath.

"Yes, Donny, it's me. How have you been?"

"How have I been? That's a laugh. You know how I've been," he said while raising his arm and gesturing around the store. "How and where have you been?"

"Well, it wasn't easy leaving the South, but I stopped working for a law firm in Chattanooga a few years ago and moved to South Dakota. I had an offer I couldn't refuse. I wanted to feel as if I were actually helping the people I promised to serve, not just the ones who could afford the high-priced lawyer fees. I help represent Native Americans to make sure that they get a fair shake these days and that their culture and image is not merely used as a plaything for the rest of society." She thought she may have gone too far in her description, as she had been known to do throughout her entire life.

"Sounds pretty liberal," he said laughing.

She blushed and smiled a wide smile. "You know me. Always one for a cause."

"I remember you from years ago when your mom and you would come in here. She always talked a lot about you when you were gone to college. How you wanted to help those who couldn't help themselves. I remember that. And I remember when she finally came in after we had all found out that your dad passed. Mary was such a rock," he said in his kindest voice.

If only he could have seen the many nights she cried herself to sleep, she thought. That fateful night when she discovered her dad had been in a plane crash while traveling to Boston to visit a longtime college friend, how the inclement weather was just inclement enough to cause the pilot to misjudge his landing. A typical landing speed for a plane this size was 120 knots at an angle of two-and a-half to three degrees. His plane tried to make its landing at almost ten degrees and a speed close to 130 knots. He and two hundred and ninety nine others died aboard that jetliner. Pictures showed the aftermath of the fatal landing and proved, once again, that no one could outmaneuver the laws of physics. It was a tragedy that spread through the entire town, and people came together in ways that surprised, and humbled, Jill.

"I know, Don. There's not a day that doesn't go by that I don't think about my dad and about what he did for me and I wonder ‘what if?' all the time. It doesn't ever do any good, but I wonder. I wanted to be just like him, the kind of person he was. He would help anyone who needed it, in work, in life, in anything."

"Jill, sometimes, well, no I won't impose on you."

"No, go on," she said.

"Let me just say that we can't always know what good will come out of bad situations. I can tell you one thing, I'm thrilled that you stopped in today! How could I have known that I would have been graced by your presence?"

"You could not have." She smiled.

She closed her eyes and inhaled the aromatic fragrances in the store. Candles of all scents and hues lined the shelves along the walls. These were the best-smelling candles to which she had ever put her nose. In all of the indoor malls she had been to all across the country, there were no candles that compared to the ones that Don Wallace sold in his shop. The vanillas were so good and strong that they made one truly believe she had a vanilla sundae in her hand. The mulberry had such a syrupy-sweet smell that someone could easily have substituted it for a glaze on his pancakes. They were that good. The back of his shop contained all of the stationary she and her mom used to buy for her to write thank you notes for birthday and Christmas gifts. Many years had passed—many, many—she thought, since those days, and she looked back on that time of her life with the utmost fondness, the one exception the loss of her father at such an early age. He passed just before her tenth birthday, leaving a void that would probably never be filled.