FWC “The Wrong End of the Stick” (RESULT)

[Stupot]

To get the wrong end of the stick is to completely misunderstand a situation.

It’s not a concept I’m very familiar with, being that I’m always right. So I need some examples. Tell me some stories, anecdotes, poems or scenes which illustrate one or more people totally getting the wrong end of the stick about something, and the ramifications, implications and aftermath thereof.

Deadline is February 17th 20th
(Valentine’s theme optional)

[Mandle]

B&B

Spoiler

The brilliant sunlight glinted everywhere on the ocean, sparkling back to me in such a multitude of flashes as to make me turn my back on the surf and close my eyes.

The residue of the light painted a checkerboard of green and red against my eyelids, and then faded enough so that I dared open them again.

And there is was again: The beachfront strip of Bali, the kind of island paradise I had dreamed of for all my life.

I had learned of warm places like this as a child and disbelieved that such wonders were even possible as the snow piled up outside the classroom windows. Snow that I had to trudge back through on my way home past the shuttered storefronts of my small Romanian town. Snow that I had to shovel from my house's driveway so my drunken father wouldn't beat me to sleep and could drive his drunken way to the factory the next morning.

And then, growing into my teens, attending the cold and lonely state-funded funeral of my father, spitting on his grave undeservedly next to that of my lovely mother after the other four attendees had hurried off, becoming the owner of the shack and debt he had left behind, I began to believe that island paradises were real, in the same way that people who have never been to New York believe in it:

As a dream that is certainly true, but will never be true for me.

And then, in an order I'm still not sure of, the wall fell and the dictator's head was shaved into a mohawk and put through a noose and, not much changed for the better.

I still went to my job pumping gasoline into cars that grew progressively nicer over the years and decades and finally I had saved enough money to either be safe or brave with.

I chose the latter option and now here I was, the toes of my bare feet caressing warm sand, instead of snow, for the first time as I flexed them with a delicious sigh, the taxi that brought me here still sitting by the curb of the beach-side strip, the driver looking at me dubiously like I might flee back to the airport at any moment:

A stranger in a strange land, but I waved him away, and he drove off with a perplexed frown.

I didn't need him anymore. I knew it was only a short walk up the main lane from the beachfront and then a left and a right to the Bed and Breakfast I had booked for the next three weeks.

Three weeks of heaven that would have to do for me for the rest of my life. I would never be able to afford something like this again. Hell, I would have to work from my current forties into my fifties to even replace half of the money these weeks would cost me, but that didn't matter now that I was here and walked up the warm wooden boards of the short staircase up from the beach with my shoes and socks in one hand and my cardboard suitcase with the scuffed plastic corner brackets in the other.

Straight up the lane between the surfboard rental on the left and the indoor/outdoor palm-tree-decked-out bar on the right, and then the left and the right that I remembered from the brochure, past running brown-footed children's giggles and double-takes at this pasty white man in his threadbare Eastern Bloc suit, to the house that was the B&B I recognized from the same brochure.

A knock on the front door of the two-story, salt-peeling white paint on sun-fading blue trim, house brought no response so I guessed it was best to just let myself in.

The door was unlocked and opened onto a narrow foyer with a staircase leading up on the right next to a corridor going deeper into the house and a well-lit living room opening off to the left.

On one of the brightly-cushioned cane sofa chairs in the living space sat a very dark brown leathery man, in purple beach shorts and a white tank-top, his lizard-skinnish face tipped back on his thin neck that seemed to be made only of tendons. His eyes were closed and his mouth wide open towards the ceiling and I thought at first that he was dead.

But he wasn't. He stirred awake with a throaty nose-snort that seemed to startle him as much as it had me.

His eyes settled on me and he said "Oh, you're here." to which I replied "Yes." and he said something like to go upstairs to my room but my English either wasn't good enough to follow the whole thing or his wasn't good enough to express it but I got the gist and went up the stairs to a dusty narrow hallway. Upon some investigation I found what was most likely his bedroom and then what was most likely mine, the smaller and less lived-in of the two.

By the time I had my suitcase unpacked into the brightly painted red and orange dresser and sat down on the springy single bed and looked out the window over the multi-colored tiled roofs to the impossible blue expanse of the sea, I felt at home.

And... I realized, quite hungry.

So I went back downstairs to find the old man pottering around on the back porch watering some lush plants in sun-bathed pots here and there under a sparsely-boarded awning.

I asked him "Sorry, sir, what time dinner?" and he grunted "Same as always." and then something about if I wasn't liking that then to deal with it myself.

So I told him thank you and went back inside and found the pokey little corner kitchen. There was a fridge and a counter and sink and a few overhead cupboards painted white with fringes of green leaves around the doors.

I had a drink of water drawn from the burping steel sink in a red plastic cup with a faded yellow McDonald's M on it and then hunted around for some food.

By the time I had heated up a can of baked beans and burnt some bread over the other burner of the chipped white gas stove, I felt the presence of the old man behind me and he said "Enough for two?" and chuckled.

I turned to him and smiled and said "Sure thing!" and cut my losses with only a half slice of gas-smelling singed toast and half a can of beans for me, and the same for him, which we ate out on the back porch at a dinky little folding table in silence until we were pretty much finished and he asked "Not what you were expecting?"

To be honest, I had expected a bit more from the brochure, but I stammered out a "No, is beautiful!" not wanting him to take offense. It was, after all, still my own little roof over my head in this paradise I had dreamed of my whole life.

He grinned a grin that was mostly gaps between yellowed jutting teeth and said "We smoke?".

I had stopped smoking a few years before but said "Yes, and coffee?" and he said "You make coffee. I make smokes."

By the time I had figured out the kitchen again enough to prepare two cups of black instant coffee, one of them the McDonald's cup again and the other a ceramic-coated steel military-looking thing, and brought them back to the back porch, he was already halfway through smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. He passed it to me with a guttural cough into the cup of his elbow and a "Here-you-have-it" jut of his head.

I took it from him and had a sip of the coffee, which was bitter and hot and delicious, and took a pull on the cigarette. And my whole life changed then and there.

The musky dank smoke from the cigarette filled my lungs and I spluttered it back out with a spray of left-over black droplets of the coffee from my mouth. The old man burst out in fits of laughter braying something like "It's ripe! Good, no?!" and then said something else but each syllable he spoke seemed to draw out for yards and then miles and then furlongs as I took another pull on the wondrous cigar he had rolled for us.

I remember only laughing and smoking and listening to the old man and barely understanding a word of it until the sun set somewhere very suddenly and the old man said "Bed for me. See you in the morning."

And then he was gone into the house. I tried to make my hands and head remember how to clean up the dishes and mugs but eventually just gave up because they couldn't do it without forgetting every couple of seconds what their purpose was.

Eventually, I just sat there with a huge grin on my face, slapping at mosquitoes buzzing by my face, sometimes real, sometimes maybe imagined, until I too grew sleepy and stumbled back inside and up the stairs to my room and collapsed face-first onto my squeaky bed without a care in the world.

The brutal tropical sun on the back of my neck through the curtain-less window frame was what woke me. I was hungry too, like I have never felt before. Not a gnawing in my belly like when my drunken father couldn't put food on the table, but just a glorious craving for food.

The old man sat in the living room, reading a magazine, as I jumped off the three bottom stairs. He barely looked up when I asked "Breakfast?" and then snorted and said "No thanks. Don't eat breakfast much."

I was a bit taken aback, and said "Um, this bed and breakfast I think." and he replied with "Take the money in the bowl. Get an Egg McMuffin down the strip."

I said "Oh, okay. I go get." and he said "Bring me back one as well, would ya?"

Nodding in confusion, I took the coins and a few notes from the lagoon-themed bowl on the cabinet by the front door, careful not to catch my hand on the porcelain palm tree hanging over the blue-tinted depression in it, and went down to the beachfront road in my bare feet.

My eyes soon found the big yellow M a few blocks down and I went there and clumsily placed the order at the counter. It all came in a big brown paper bag with more than I had ordered in it, coffees and some weird potato patties, but I took it all back to the B&B and we ate out back on the porch again.

This stuff was delicious! I had never had "fast food" before, only seen it on TV. The potato things were the best part! Between bites of egg and meat and sips of coffee, their oily grated texture was the perfect complimentary side dish.

Then the old man said "We smoke?" and, with a bit of coffee and potato thing left I enthusiastically said "Oh, yes please!"

He pulled out a plastic bag from behind his chair cushion full of leaves that I recognized as the dried versions of the ones on the lush plants that grew from the pots on his porch, and crushed some into a bowl, rolled them in a paper and set it alight.

We smoked and then I just didn't care anymore about my flabby pale body. I ran down to the beach front, dashed across the road to the blare of a car horn, tore off my shirt and coat and, leaving them strewn on the sand, plunged into the beautiful blue breaking waves.

AHHHH!!! It was shockingly cold, and the waves kicked me in the balls and tumbled me over a few times, but I didn't care. In my trouser pants I got back up, spitting out sand, and lunged back into the surf.

After a few more tumbles I had the hang of just floating on my back out a bit from where the waves were breaking. The soft swell of the incoming waves lifted me and it was like floating in space, I could imagine. Sometimes they would lower me back down into a trough and my head would go underwater for a moment and then, upon resurfacing I would let go a fountain of salt water into the air from my mouth like a whale breaching does from its blowhole, I could imagine.

Then another wave crested. I had floated too close to shore again and got tumbled under it. I laughed as the wave rolled me again across the rough sand and then looked up into the face of a boy who said "Your clothes got stole." and I just laughed and laughed.

I got up, still laughing and made my way back up the lane and then left and right to the B&B. In the kitchen I found some scissors and I sat down on the floor and punctured through each leg of my black Romanian trousers with their tip and cut them off around mid-thigh.

I threw the lower sleeves into the pink plastic tip-lid garbage bin and whooped out loud in glee.

The old man appeared at the kitchen doorway and, all yellow gappy-grinned, said "How was the beach?" and I said "Great!" and he said "We smoke?"

And this is how my three weeks in paradise at his wonderful B&B passed: Scrounging meals and coffee from the kitchen supplies and going out for the wonderful food at the big yellow M, and smoking the wonderful cigars the old man rolled, and laughing and playing at the beach with ever-increasing bravery. I even once made it out far enough that my feet couldn't touch bottom anymore and panicked a bit but floundered my way back into the shallows without drinking too much brine.

I never once had to brave the doubtful-looking shower at the house, with its smell of mildew and broken wall and floor tiles. The ocean was my bath and, quite often, my toilet.

On the day I had to leave I told the old man "I go now. Thank you, Billy." (for that was his name) and he said "You come back soon, young man." and I told him yes even though I knew I never would.

He rolled me a few of his famous cigars for the trip, but I knew well enough to throw them away out the taxi's window before reaching the airport.

I boarded my plane with only my sand-filled shoes and socks, my salt-encrusted cut-off pants, my battered cardboard suitcase, and a tropical shirt I bought from the surf shop on the corner.

I arrived back home at my dreary apartment in Romania to find a stack of mail had been delivered through the door-slot in my absence.

One of the letters stood out from the usual bills and junk mail.

It was a letter post-marked over two weeks ago with a Balinese stamp.

I opened it and read the letter as best I could.

It was from the B&B I had booked my stay with asking why I had never shown up for my reservation. They said they were returning my booking fee to my bank account minus a two day penalty for the no-show.

I checked the extra brochure they included and saw that they were located up the lane from the beach and then a right turn and then a left, the opposite directions of what I thought I had remembered.

The B&B in the brochure looked a bit the same as Billy's house but, then again, most of the houses there looked quite similar now that I really thought about it.

I quit my job at the gasoline stand the next day, which is today, and stopped by the travel agent to book a new flight back to Bali the day after tomorrow.

My real estate office can just sell off the stuff in my apartment, or rent it furnished, once they figure out I'm never coming back.

I don't know who you thought I was, but I hope I'm still welcome because I'm coming home, Billy.

[close]

[Mandle]

I had the inspiration for my story pretty much instantly as soon as I saw the theme and bashed it out in a couple of hours.

I put it in hide brackets because I have found that it is too easy to read the last line in a story by mistake when looking at the post directly under it.

This happened to me last round with Sinitrena's story. I already saw the final line before I even started reading the story. Which is kind of a bummer.

I would recommend for every entrant to put their story in hide brackets just under the title like I did.

It stops from spoiling the story and also less clutter and scrolling for readers; they can just open each story with a click and read it from the start with no worries.

Oh, and my story draws inspiration from a Norm Macdonald story he told but I changed it a lot, especially the characters, setting, and ending.

[Baron]

To get the wrong end of the stick is to completely misunderstand a situation.

I might have had the wrong end of the stick my whole life.  I always understood the metaphor to mean you got the bad side of a deal, perhaps through misunderstanding but also possibly due to a power imbalance.  Is this theme open to broader interpretation, or must it involve hopeless naïveté? 

[Stupot]

To get the wrong end of the stick is to completely misunderstand a situation.

I might have had the wrong end of the stick my whole life.  I always understood the metaphor to mean you got the bad side of a deal, perhaps through misunderstanding but also possibly due to a power imbalance.  Is this theme open to broader interpretation, or must it involve hopeless naïveté? 

Hmm that’s not how I understand it. It could be a regional thing, but what you describe is closer to what I would call to draw the short straw, or get the raw end of the deal.

[Mandle]

To get the wrong end of the stick is to completely misunderstand a situation.

I might have had the wrong end of the stick my whole life.  I always understood the metaphor to mean you got the bad side of a deal, perhaps through misunderstanding but also possibly due to a power imbalance.  Is this theme open to broader interpretation, or must it involve hopeless naïveté? 

I thought the same as well, but it turns out that "The wrong end of the stick" means completely misunderstanding a situation, but there is a similar idiom "The sharp end of the stick" which is what I think you and I both thought at first, and means to end up on the worst side of a situation.

[Stupot]

How’s it going? Anyone else working on anything?

[Sinitrena]

I'm working on something, but I'll need a bit more time (and even then I'm not sure I'll finish it - I'm not exactly healthy right now).

[Stupot]

I'm working on something, but I'll need a bit more time (and even then I'm not sure I'll finish it - I'm not exactly healthy right now).

If you need an extra few days just say the word. Hope you feel better soon.

[Sinitrena]

I think I do, indeed, need a few more days. If you could be so kind?

[Stupot]

I think I do, indeed, need a few more days. If you could be so kind?

Granted. The new deadline is Feb 20.

[Baron]

To get the wrong end of the stick is to completely misunderstand a situation.

I might have had the wrong end of the stick my whole life.  I always understood the metaphor to mean you got the bad side of a deal, perhaps through misunderstanding but also possibly due to a power imbalance.  Is this theme open to broader interpretation, or must it involve hopeless naïveté? 

I thought the same as well, but it turns out that "The wrong end of the stick" means completely misunderstanding a situation, but there is a similar idiom "The sharp end of the stick" which is what I think you and I both thought at first, and means to end up on the worst side of a situation.

I think it's the picture that threw me off, since I don't actually know anybody that says "get the wrong end of the stick."  We say "get the shitty end of the stick", which very much means getting the least pleasant aspect of something. 

Thanks for the extension!

[Sinitrena]

The Long and Short of It

They lay next to each other. One long and thin, the other short and thicker in both body and mind (at least, according to the other brother).

For the time being, they were sleeping, while the grass around and under them swayed gently in a late summer breeze. Tim, the long and thin one of the brothers, occasionally rolled from one side to the other and just as occasionally he hit his brother Tom in the side with his long limbs. As they were both sleeping, one cannot fault him for this, and besides, Tom did not seem to mind. As a matter of fact, he didn't even seem to notice it. Only his dreams were sometimes interrupted and jolted in a different direction but he never remembered them, so their disconnection did not matter to him.

Now, though, noises drifted to them. Heavy steps shook the ground they lay on. Running and jumping feet disturbed the wind and rouse the little animals, the insects and the rodents. Bugs scattered and little brown mice lifted their noses towards the sound.

The two children, for it were two little boys confusing the serenity of the meadow, chased each other. Soon, one boy bent down and picked up a stick from the ground. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh it went through the air.

Tim, as it was Tim who was just picked up by the child, shook and shivered and his still fresh leaves - he had fallen in the storm last night and not all leaves had been blown away, you must know - quivered in the draft. He blinked a few times with his brown and green eyes. Created from other, smaller twigs, they still glistened in the sun.

Tim looked around for a moment, recognized the two boys, brothers, the son's of the owner of the tree he had once belonged to, and settled comfortably in the child's hand.

"Now I am a knight, and this is my sword!" the kid called, running over the grass, followed by the other one running after him with a stick of his own.

He had, as you already guessed, chosen Tom as his toy, and whipped the air with his stick like mad.

Tom was woken from his dreams, of course, and he soon heard the boys call to each other.

"I am the Black Knight, you'll never catch me!"

"Not true! I'm the White Knight, and this is my sword Excalibur! Surrender or die!"

Tom, not yet entirely awake, looked around for the glint of metal in the child's hand. Not seeing any, he followed the child's arm from his shoulder to his hand with his deep brown eyes.

It couldn't be, it was impossible, but no, he was sure. The child had nothing in his hands but Tom.

I'm a sword? he wondered, confused, but then, more certain, I am a sword! There was no doubt in his mind, no uncertainty, no question. It was sudden, this realization, but that was just the way Tom was: slow to understand reality but quick to draw conclusions.

Tom shook his thin limbs, making the rest of the foilage still on the wood shake and rattle.

"Tim. Tim!" he called over the sound of the wind rushing past his body, "Tim, I am a sword. The wizard" - for what else could the child be, if he had that kind of power? - "has turned me into a sword!"

Tim hardly heard his brother. He had gone back into a comfortable state between sleep and alertness. He blinked a few times, trying to parse his brother's words. "An imaginary one." he finally said, "In the mind of a child. In a dream."

Tim spoke his words so silently that Tom wasn't even sure he heard him - and he certainly must have heard him wrong. How could he doubt the powers of the wizard, when Tom clearly saw the bark breaking from his own silvery wood - silver like the edge of the great sword Excalibur - the leaves falling down to the ground or the dew on them shining like jewels in the sunlight, or the little twigs near the child's hand forming a guard.

Preposterous, it was preposterous to doubt the child-wizard's power!

Meanwhile, the game of tag the two boys were playing had turned into a standoff between two powerful knights. Were the fence confined the meadow, they stood facing each other, mighty swords in brawny hands (well, if you believe in the powers of imagination, of course). Soon, they called playful insults at each other, soon point of stick touched point of stick.

Tom, spurred on by the sweaty hand around his hilt, called out to his brother again: "I am the mighty sword Excalibur! I shall defeat every enemy, break every foe's weapon! No sword shall ever win against me!"

Tim sighed. "Whatever."

"You don't believe it? You don't believe in the great magic..."

Tim interrupted him, bored. "You're not a sword, Tom. These children are not knights or wizards. They are the same boys who climbed up on our tree just days ago and threw mud at each other. One day they are..."

Tim could not say more. The swords clashed against each other, sending leaves and little twigs flying. They clashed, they clanked, they fought like hell, the children as much as the sticks.

It was a rough, uncouth fight. One cannot say that there was any elegance in the steps of the boys. No sophisticated swordsmanship disturbed the flow of their play, just wild fun lead their arms in confusing circles through the air.

Leaves flew, twigs broke, until one final, heavy blow let the two sticks crash against each other. A maddening sound shook them both to the core. The wood, dried already from the time the two branches were seperated from their tree, creaked and crunched. And then, with a swoosh and a plop, three pieces of wood, that were once two, rushed to the ground.

Now, as is often the case with stories that are told from one generation to the next - as this one should be - there is more than one beginning, more than one middle, and, most notable of all, more than one ending.

One brother broke the other, that much is known, one stick crushed to the ground in two pieces while the other survived, one sword claimed the victory of ages. But which one lived and which one died, and if you find the answer to this question, then can you tell me why?

For the children, it did not matter, their swords were forgotten as soon as they fell. Their play brought them to other parts of the garden, into different times and stranger worlds.

But what happened here? What happened to Tim snd Tom? Did imagination, a magic far deeper than any witch's spell, turn a stick into a sword to break a measly stick? Was Tom, short and thick, just stronger than the leaner Tim? Or do you want a lesson on the limits of imagination, on the harsh truths of reality, and Tim broke his brother Tom, his body and his dreams?

Whatever your answer may be, forever it shall be yours alone.

---------------------------

I'm pretty sure this had more to do with the topic when I started writing.
(Written on my phone, so please ignore all typos.)

[Baron]

Fun fact: I was too busy this week to sit down and write, but my parents (in their 70s) were coming this weekend for a visit, which usually makes it difficult to sneak away and write.  Instead, we decided to write a collaborative entry as a family activity.  We brainstormed over slo-gin and wrote with scotch, editing the next morning with just a slight hangover.  The story is best served on the rocks - enjoy! 

------------

Taken to the Cleaners

Stealing the money was the easy part.  A slight outlay on party masks and duffle bags, and then fifteen minutes of waving shotguns around down at the bank on payroll day.  Curly and Zippo were prone to over-optimism, but even they hadn’t considered they’d make off with quite so much.  Even piled high, the bundles of bills barely fit on Curly’s kitchen table.  After years of getting the short end of everything, they finally had it made.

“I’m buying a mansion and a bright red Lamborghini!” Zippo declared.

“Don’t be an idiot!” Curly told him.  “Your blabby girlfriend would wonder where you got all that money.”

"I'll just tell everyone that I won the lottery," Zippo said defensively.

"Did we both win the lottery at the exact same time?" Curly asked sarcastically.  "Who'll believe that!  Besides, we all check the lotto winners in the paper every week.  No one will believe it.  And then we’re busted!  No, we gotta be smart about this.”

"So, we’re just gonna drive back to the factory in your clunky old car on Monday, and pretend nothing has happened---with all this money sitting in your kitchen?"  Zippo was a good pal, but he was a long way from the brains of the operation.

“No, no, Zippo, my good buddy.  We need to launder the money.  Make it clean, so it can’t be traced.  Then we come into it all legit like, follow?”

“Oh yeah, I follow Curly.  I know exactly what you’re talking about.”

It was the middle of the night before Curly realized that Zippo had understood his plan quite literally: he caught him down in the basement running bills through the washing machine with all the enthusiasm of a kid running a mud-pie restaurant.  Still, it did make the money look a lot less new, and it gave Curly a great idea, too.

“We’re opening a laundromat!” he announced to Zippo.  “Down in the sketchy part of town, where it will make no money at all.  We’ll take this cash here as if it had come into the business and deposit it into the bank, and in a year we can retire as legit entrepreneurs.  What do ya think?”

“I’m too young to retire, and I don’t speak French,” Zippo confessed, scratching his head.

“We’ll get some frontman to do all the work,” Curly continued, warming even more to the idea.  “We’ll be the owners, but we’ll lease the business to this patsy so it’ll be on them if they get caught with the dirty money.  It’s foolproof!”

And so they rented a crummy old building in the sketchy part of town where half the windows were boarded up and bullet holes pocked the brickwork.  They bought the cheapest second-hand washers and dryers they could - all cash transactions - in order to keep expenses down.  One vendor threw in a few broken vending machines to sweeten the deal.  They even got local hoodlums to paint the building up in graffiti in order to scare away as many customers as possible.

“Tell all your friends they can hang out outside any time they want!” Curly chuckled.

In the meantime Curly had found the ideal patsy to front and man their operation.  Mrs. Phong spoke only broken English and wasn’t too fussy about signing random documents.  She might have only been fifty, but she looked a lot closer to eighty, and she had all the endearing qualities of a recent immigrant: a willingness to work long hours cheaply without asking too many questions.  Curly and Zippo toasted their successes over the kitchen table that evening.

“Now it’s just a waiting game, Zippo ol’ buddy ol’ pal!” Curly raved.  “Every afternoon we run half a stack of bills through the washer and dryer, then put them in a cash envelope to deposit at the bank into our names.  In less than a year we’ll have this whole table cleared, and in the meantime we can start spending the ‘profit’ from the new business on ourselves!”

And so they happily went down to the laundromat the next day with half a stack of bills and discretely ran them through the works before stuffing them into the envelope.  “You have yesterday’s take?” Mrs. Phong asked, shoving a cash box towards them.

“What?” asked Curly.  Inside he found hundreds of dollars in small bills.

“Lots of business at night,” Mrs. Phong explained.  “People need laundromat in this area.”

“Even with all the hoodlums outside?” Curly asked.

“Hoodlums good customers,” Mrs. Phong answered.  “Like bright colours with no stains.  Also make good witnesses, lower street crime on block.”

Curly and Zippo took the money with a shrug.  But the next day they were even more amazed, as there was over a thousand dollars in the cash box.  “We only all-night store in area,” Mrs. Phong explained.  “Cigarette machine big business.”

But Curly had begun to get uneasy.  “We’re bringing in too much cash,” he worried. 

“How can you have too much cash?” Zippo asked happily, tossing the bills like they were autumn leaves.

The next day they returned to find the cash-box stuffed with several thousands of dollars.  “What the hell?!?” Curly asked Mrs. Phong.  “Where is all this money coming from?”

“Cheap daycare for night-shift,” Mrs. Phong explained.  “Many single moms in low-income area.  Kids sleep in warm towels under folding tables.”

Curly moaned in exasperation.  “Now listen, Mrs. Phong,” he shouted.  “My partner and I didn’t rob a bank just to get caught running an illegal daycare service!”  But wouldn’t you know it, there were two city police officers standing right behind him when he said it.

“Is this guy bothering you, Mrs. Phong?” one of the officers asked.  “We were just in here looking for a lead on a shooting last week, but it looks like we netted ourselves some bank robbers!”

“And illegal daycare schemes, c’mon man!” his partner chimed in as he brought out the cuffs.  “Have you no decency, sir?”

“But, hey, wait a second, it was Mrs. Phong!  It was Mrs. Phong!” Curly cried.

“Sure it was, Perp, sure it was.  Mrs. Phong is just about the only fine upstanding citizen this neighbourhood has.  You tell the judge it was Mrs. Phong and he’ll probably give you consecutive life sentences.”

And that was the end of Curly and Zippo’s business experiment.  “I STILL RUN LAUNDROMAT!” Mrs. Phong called after them as they were escorted out the door.  She picked up the envelope stuffed with cash from where Curly had dropped it in all the excitement and returned to the little back office that smelled of mildew to start counting the day’s take.

[Stupot]

Thanks for the stories, folks.
Voting is now open until Feb 27th

This time, I think we'll go back to sharing votes, rather than giving a score out of ten. However, rather than only ten points to dish out, you now have 25 points each to play with. This should make it a little easier to express your opinion through the points you give and also decrease the chances of a tie.

Vote by PMing me your point distributions by the 27th.

By the way, anyone reading this is encouraged to vote, not just participants.

Happy reading.

[Sinitrena]

Two very good stories - as one would expect from such great writers!

Mandle: Beautiful written and a very thorough application of the topic. Full marks on this account. I did get kinda right away that the protagonist was in the wrong place, I'm not sure if the reader was supposed to figure this out right away, after a few scenes or only when the narrator does at the very end. Either way, I'm glad the story didn't turn into an embarrasing situation where one character tries to explain himself or tries to trick the other - or all kinds of other awkward possibilities one might find in a comedy. The way it is, it reads like a nice feel-good story. I liked it. A minor detail I'm slightly disappointed (this word feels to strong) about is that we never learn whom Billy was actually expecting, leaving a (somewhat) important plot-threat hanging. Otherwise, all around a good story.

Baron: Good characters make for a good set-up here. I felt with Zippo when he laundered the money, that's how I understood this expression when I heard it for the first time. The crime drama I was watching then as a child turned out rather confusing.  I love the character of Mrs. Phong, though it is dofficult to say if she acts intentionally or not - does she just have a goid business instinct or is she setting up the two thieves? Is she naive or devious? I like the ambiguity in her personality. There's one minir detail I would probably change: Mrs. Phong's business moves too fast. Zippo and Curly should probably check on Mrs. Phong werkly, not daily to make it more realistic. Also, the ending is a bit sudden and needlessly deus ex machina: the cops just happen to be there, just happen to hear something incriminating. A cleaner (pun intended) ending would do the story good.

I haven't decided on my allication of points yet, so I'll send them sometime later today or tomorrow.

[Baron]

Excellent stories, my peeps! 

@ Mandle: I will admit that I was leery at the beginning, as your writing style this time was heavy on wordy descriptions with lots and lots of clauses and sub-clauses.  But I got into it, I suppose as a tourist does, slowly acclimating to a new version of life.  I found the contrast between the narrator's emotionally and actually cold life back in Romania and the warm vividness of the vacation to be powerful, although it strains credulity that he had never experienced a pleasant warm climate in the Romanian summer.  Also - again, something someone who lives with snow 50% of the year would notice - nobody would shovel the driveway the night before so that dad could get out the next morning: snow ploughs and more actual snow would just bury the driveway overnight and you would have to shovel again in the morning to get out.  But that detail aside, I really liked how you framed the mix-up as a life-changing event that I did not see coming.  It's actually a hopeful message, made more so by the dreary hopelessness of your narrator's regular life, that your life can happily change for the better by sheer mistake.

@ Sinitrena:  I had to do a double-take after the first few paragraphs, but then I had a good grasp on who Tim and Tom were.  This story reminds me of family camping trips when I was young - my little brother and I would fence with sticks for hours to pass the time.  Again I will nitpick on details that really aren't that important, but a stick with leaves still on it would never break - the wood would be too green.  To get marshmallow roasting sticks (green wood being better as it wouldn't burn easily) we would find a sapling about 4 feet tall and - not being trusted with saws or knives - we would twist it until it snapped at the base.  It would take a good minute of work, and there would always be those last few tendons of wood pulp still stubbornly attaching the trunk to the root.  But, for the purposes of your story, the sudden and dramatic break makes much more sense.      Although I think the beginning of your story could be more clearly written (are the branches swaying in the tree or on the ground already?), I liked how you describe Tom getting sucked into the imaginative world of the children's play, and I liked the ambiguity of who got the short stick, who got the short end of the stick, who was the broken stick, and what the story actually meant.

[Mandle]

It's actually a hopeful message, made more so by the dreary hopelessness of your narrator's regular life, that your life can happily change for the better by sheer mistake.

This comment alone has made me feel like the entire point of writing the story was understood! Thank you for that, my friend!

[Stupot]

Sorry for the delay.

Here are the results:
Mandle: 29
Baron: 25
Sinitrena: 21

Update with my own feedback:

Mandle: This was a really nice story. It's a well-captured feel-good snapshot of the experience of backpacking in a distant land. You really smell the sea air as you read. And the misunderstanding itself, far from being a problem for the main character, is actually the best thing that ever happened to him. In fact, 'problems' are the only thing really missing from the story. I think if you'd added some obstacles, an antagonist or a bit of tension (like when his clothes are stolen, maybe instead of laughing it off, he actually has to chase the people who took them because in his pocket was something that belonged to the old man).

Sinitrena: I enjoyed this one, too. It took me longer than it probably should have done to realise Tim and Tom were branches, but I enjoyed the descriptions and the image of the boys playing with the sticks and the idea that the sticks might be conscious of what's happening, and even enjoy it.  I think the story might have had more of an emotional kick if it had been less ambiguous about which stick had broken. We know one of them died, but the fact that we don't know who takes the emotion out of it a little, for me. whereas if it had been clearly Tom who died, I think that would have been more tragic.

Baron and the folks: I love that you wrote this collaboratively with your parents. Are they into writing, themselves? I loved the image of these two bumbling bank-robbers with all this money realising they couldn't spend it. I knew the joke was coming when I saw launder in italics, but it was still funny. And then you just ran with it. Mrs Phong is a great character. And better still for the fact that we don't really know if she was actually trying to help or was setting them up, though I suspect the latter (The title suggests that these thieves were 'Taken to the Cleaners' by Mrs Phong). I demand a Mrs Phong spin-off series.

[Mandle]

Cheers, guys! I sent my feedback via PM as the contestants know. The new theme is up already. Have at it! I will probably enter a story just for fun as I don't want to miss this theme. It's a trope I really love and am a complete sucker for.