Week One of PLOTTO: THE MASTER CONTEST OF ALL PLOTS brought in an overwhelming array of great stories. We found ourselves in busy train stations, fish markets, and test labs. Strangers passed each other cryptic letters, time-travel talismans, howling babies. And then they vanished, leaving us eager for more.
Congratulations to last week’s winner, John Lawton, whose hauntingly funny “Hey Neighbor” has us eyeing our Nextdoor accounts with extra suspicion.
The prompt for Week Two can be found here. See you next week!
The posts on Hey Neighbor fell into three buckets: Prayer Group, Lost Dog, and Suspicious Individual(s). Miller hated Hey Neighbor.
His wife Jennifer read the post “Saturday Picnic” out loud. “This sounds fun.”
“Sounds like work.” It was probably a search picnic for the Crandalls’s beagle Dixon.
“We’re going,” she said.
“I miss Louisville.”
“You hated Louisville. You missed Denton, once we got to Louisville?”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll make my potato salad.”
The picnic was in Coolidge Park, along the river. Long tables were set up in a U-shape and blankets were scattered about. Miller scanned the faces, trying to match each with a Hey Neighbor post. His potato salad had been a hit.
Miller got up to use the restroom. He spotted the woman in the greasy blue fleece seconds before she plowed into him. He apologized. She was young–twenty maybe. Her hair was matted and oily, like she’d slept under a car.
She looked at Miller, her eyes wide. “I shouldn’t have looked.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She thrust a small tube into his hands and broke away. No one noticed.
The tube was a rolled up document. Not paper, it was like thin worn leather, soft.
He flinched as Jennifer came up behind him.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know.” He knew enough not to show her.
That night Miller waited until Jennifer was asleep and went to the porch. He unrolled the tube–the pink surface was a crudely drawn map of his street. Without lifting his eyes he slowly made his way to the sidewalk. He looked up at the McNeil’s house across the street. When he looked back at the map the words “Hates his son for eating the last piece of cake” appeared over the house. Miller thought he was imagining it but looked back down and there it was.
He stepped out into the street and the map shifted. He looked at the next house—“Steals from tip jars.” Miller smiled; a bit more than prayer groups were happening here.
He picked up his pace. He hadn’t moved like this in years. He stood in front of a two-story house with the state flag in front—”Pees in the sink.” A green shingled house with a screened in porch—“In love with her brother in law.” Miller ambled along, losing track of the hours. “Happy his brother got fat.” “Pretended to cry at her mother’s funeral.” “Fucks his wife’s shoes.” “Poisoned Dixon.”
Pink light filtered through the trees as Miller made his way home. He knew he was going to have to look. Things hadn’t been easy for them over the last two years: he hadn’t wanted to move again.
He got to his yard. It really was a nice house. Jennifer was right about the camellias. They made the yard come alive. He held the map in front of him. Without her they’d be out on the street with all the lost dogs.
John Lawton is a writer living in Chattanooga, TN. A graduate of the MFA in Fiction program at NC State University he is currently putting the finishing touches on a series of stories set in the fine state of Rhode Island and is working on a novel that revolves around the Newport Folk Festival. He’s also considering doing a podcast from the shed behind the house, because what else could it be there for?
Here’s the Plotto prompt that, er, prompted John’s story: {A}, proceeding about his business and caught in a crowd, is confronted suddenly by a strange person, {BX}, who thrusts a mysterious object, {X}, into his hand and, without a word, disappears.
PLOTTO: THE MASTER BOOK OF ALL PLOTS: In the 1920s, dime store novelist William Wallace Cook painstakingly diagrammed and cataloged his personal writing method—“Purpose, opposed by Obstacle, yields Conflict”—for the instruction and illumination of his fellow authors. His efforts resulted in 1,462 plot scenarios and Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots was born. A how-to manual for plot, Plotto offers endless amalgamations to inspire limitless narratives. Open the book to any page to find plots you may never have known existed, from morose cannibals to gun-wielding preachers to phantom automobiles. Equal parts reference guide and historical oddity, Plotto is sure to amaze and delight writers for another century.