Weekend Results Are In!

Meet Your Top 2 Picks + 1 Honorable Mention

The challenge was to write a 199-word story, not including the title, using this opening:

• “You are not allowed to park here.”

And, just like last time, the writers outdid themselves. If you haven’t had a chance to read all the entries, please do so. They were awesome.

Based on our reader picks, meet the two stories written by Tilly McGill and Natalie Eslick. And an honorable mention I couldn’t pass up by Michael P. Marpaung.

Enjoy these three fun writes.

The Dare by Tilly McGill

“You’re not allowed to park here.” I whispered in mock amazement at his brazen choice. It’s broad daylight and the middle of the lot. People would see us.

His smile, it hinted to more devious plans. He knows I’ve never done anything outside of rambunctious kissing but this, this took me to the line I never dreamed of crossing.

“What if someone sees us?” I ask, my voice low like someone outside, walking to their cars from the busy supermarket could hear me.

“What if they do?” He answers and my stomach drops knowing I want to, but I should say no.

But I really want to.

He shifts his weight and leans over the small sedan center console. His hand finds my bare knee and slides up, slow and dangerously close to hem of my skirt. He requested I wear it and now I know why.

With every inch his fingertips climb, my face turned crimson and my lungs seize and fail. How does he make me feel so good when we are so bad and daring?

“Tell me yes.” He pleads as he leans close.

“Yes. Touch me.” I breathe, and his lips close around mine, hungrily.

Unfurling by Natalie Eslick

You are not allowed to park here.

You are not allowed to take up permanent residence, to linger, to loiter, to languish.

You may not consider this a loading dock, nor a drop off point.

I granted you a momentary pause, a passing place, once, and you stayed instead.

You set down insidious roots, coiled with viscous intention from my head to my heart.

Winding through my core until doubled over with fear and grief I could not stand in my own power.

I could only stand in my own way.

Like prying lichen from granite, painstaking, brutal, I have worked diligently to uncoil the words, the wounds you brought.

To push back.

To question.

To no longer listen with rapt devotion.

It was easy to accept your lies, a twisted desire to keep me safe, but harmed and hurt instead.

I am unfurling.

My shoulders roll, my wings spread wide, the bindings broken.

I raise my head, strong, on shoulders straight.

I can see you now, I can see what you are, my wounded child.

I embrace you, I wrap you in a mothers love and care.

You are not allowed to park here, self doubt.

Not anymore.

The Parking Lot by Michael P. Marpaung

“You are not allowed to park here.”

I blinked and gave the policeman at the other side of my car’s window a look of confusion. “Why not?”

This was a reasonable question, in my opinion. I always wait for delivery orders at this parking lot. I figured that the cop felt that I was loitering, though I didn’t know why he’d even bother given that the lot was not full at all.

Now that I thought about it, there were barely any cars parked here. Weird.

Weirder still was the response that I got from my interlocutor:

“This place is infested.”

“By what?”

“Demons.”

“Excuse me?” I could hardly believe what I heard.

But the cop nodded in all seriousness. “We’ve received reports of a demonic infestation in this mall. We just called in a priest to exorcise the whole place.”

My face was red hot with anger. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

And then everything went black.

When I regained consciousness, I found out that I was lying down on the ground. I looked up and saw the cop. With him was an elderly priest.

“What happened?” I asked.

The priest smiled. “The exorcism was a success.”