Week Fiction 04: The Promise Ring

Zack "Laser" Lassetter could taste blood. As he sat on the bleachers in the darkened gym and bit at the flesh inside his lower lip, he thought about how poised he used to be — recognizing blitzes and dropping back in the pocket, checking down his reads, never staring too long at his man.

Football captains don't fidget, Zack thought. They don't chew on their lips, and they sure as shit don't have to hold back tears as they fiddle with a promise ring in the pocket of a new letterman jacket. It was 18-carat yellow gold woven into Celtic knots with a heart in front. But what do you do when the girl who was supposed to wear it gets murdered? Could you ever give it to someone else? Do you just take it back to the store?

Zack pinched hard on the ring as the taste of blood subsided. He knew in his pounding heart that the ring was his last tangible link to Holly Holbrook. Every guy in school dreams of dating the head cheerleader, the homecoming queen, the pretty petite blonde class president. But Zack fucking earned it. Every 275-pound bench press, every 4.6-second 40, every bleary-eyed hour in the film room added up to make Zack the exceptional individual Holly deserved. Her soulmate.

And he knew it was true because the things Holly did to him in the back of the brand-new Mustang GT his parents got him for his 18th birthday were like bootlegging for a game-winning touchdown, only better.

It's why he knew in his aching heart he would see her again. She would appear to him and tell him who sold her the bag of marijuana and who stole her nameplate necklace. Then he could put all the clues together and find the killer before the police. And then...

Well, he could figure that out later. For now, Zack Lassetter didn't have time to fantasize about what he would do when he met the five-foot-eight male from the police description. The guy her mother saw lurking in the front lawn before she realized Holly had been strangled to death with the honor cords from her graduation gown.

Zack had work to do, so why was he sitting in the chilly gymnasium, waiting to meet the sender of some cryptic text message?

Because, he thought, maybe the gym was a good place to see a ghost. After all, it was the spot where he and Holly first kissed during junior homecoming. It was the very last slow dance of the night.

Zack squeezed the promise ring as hard as he could, but it would not bend.

Suddenly, Zack heard footsteps from across the gym. A tiny athletic shoe stepped into the blue light from the window above, followed by a leg and a cheerleader's skirt.

Holly? No, Zack thought. You can't hear ghost footsteps.

Fully bathed in the light, Zack could see the girl was wearing a military jacket over her cheerleader uniform. She had straight brown hair and glasses.

She dropped the coat to the floor. "Thanks for meeting me, Zack."

"You're not a cheerleader," he said.

"I could be. Don't I look good?"

"You're wasting my time, whoever you are."

The girl let out a sob. "It's me, Zack. Mildred Merck."

He stared at the pathetic stranger. If she wasn't Holly's ghost, she didn’t matter.

"I ..." she sobbed again, "I interviewed you for the paper after you won prom king."

"Well you can interview me after I find Holly's killer. Maybe I'll have a press conference."

"I'm not here for an interview, Zack."

"Then what the hell do you want?"

"I want to dance with you. Like at prom." She looked back at the jacket she had left lying in the pool of light. "I brought my iPod."

"That's stupid, OK?"

"Then why did you come?"

"I thought the text might have a clue about the murder." Zack clamped on the ring so hard that he imagined the point of the heart breaking the skin on the inside of his knuckle. He could almost feel the warm, sticky blood trickling down his finger. "And I thought I might..."

"Might what, Zack?"

"It's stupid."

"It's not stupid. None of this is stupid."

Would this girl understand? Zack tried to remember the prom king interview. Had those stick-out ears really listened to him? What questions had rolled off those mousey teeth? What did it even feel like to be a winner? Zack could hardly remember, but this girl had written it all down somewhere.

"I need to see her ghost," Zack said.

"Maybe you don't need to be alone. Strange things happen when you dance in the dark, Zack. Holly is gone, but maybe..." she looked at her jacket again. She probably wore it every day. "Maybe she can talk through me."

"This is the stupidest thing I ever heard. I'm going home."

The skinny girl walked back to her crumpled jacket. She bent at the knees, picked it up and zipped it all the way to the top. When she turned around, the only part of her face Zack could see was glasses glinting in the blue light.

The voice came out of nowhere. "Millie, what are you doing?" It was a different kid, just as skinny, in skinny jeans and a worn-out blazer. He had glasses, too — thick black ones.

Zack let go of the ring and stood up. He recognized this guy from a different interview, the one about his decision to play for State in the fall. Zack told this guy — Jay Jesperson was his name — about how playing for State was his dream, but the hardest part would be living eight hours away from Holly Holbrook.

Zack threw his arms up. "We're playing dress-up, Jay! You're just in time for the dance."

"You need to get out of here, Laser," Jay said.

Just then, Mildred Merck screamed. Her iPod fell to the gym floor as she pulled a gun from her jacket pocket and pointed it at Zack. The gun looked familiar.
"You really should lock your car when you've got your dad's gun in the glove compartment, Zack," she said, shaking.

"Hey Laser, um," Jay sputtered, "Millie killed Holly."

Impossible. The police had said the suspect was a man, probably a drug dealer. Five-foot-eight and thin, about the size of Jay Jesperson.

Zack took one step toward the shaking girl, then another. She sobbed louder and louder as he got closer, but Zack Lassetter kept his pace until the barrel of his father's gun poked him in the chest.

"Back up," the girl almost whispered.

Zack put one hand on the gun, the other on Millie's wrist and moved the barrel toward the ceiling. With a little twist, the gun came loose in his hand. Millie clawed to get it back, so Zack threw a knee into her stomach. She crumpled to the floor.

"Holy shit," Jay said. "How did you know she wasn't going to shoot you?"

"Jay," Zack asked, slowly raising the gun toward the writer, "you sell weed, don’t you?"

"Jesus, man. You've been driving around town drunk, picking fights with your friends. It's all anybody talks about, and they should be talking about Holly."

"You were outside her house the night she was killed."

"We just got high together and fooled around some. It started when I was interviewing her for the story about you. I'm sorry, man. When she ended up dead, I figured it was you. She told me how you freaked out when she wouldn't wear your ring."

"You killed her. The cops said it was a drug dealer. You sold her the weed."

"God damn it, dude, Millie killed her. Millie was obsessed with you after she profiled you for her story. She had a key to Holly's house because she babysits Holly's little brother. For fuck's sake, she's wearing Holly's cheerleading uniform."

Still on the ground, Millie groaned. When Jay turned to look, Zack saw the sparkle of a silver chain dangling from the pocket of his jeans.

Holly's nameplate necklace. Zack straightened his arm, holding the gun higher. It all made sense. Jay could touch the necklace and see Holly's ghost. That's how he found the real killer. But Jay couldn’t have been her soulmate.

Tears welled up in Zack Lassetter's eyes as he imagined his finger tightening on the trigger.

Jay looked at Zack again. "Heads up, Laser."

Zack jumped back as the mousey girl on the floor slashed at him with a pocket knife. Police sirens sounded in the distance as Millie rose to her feat and lunged.

Zack's first two knuckles smashed Mildred Merck's glasses as his left hand connected with her temple. She dropped to the floor, this time out cold. As she lay there in the light of the gym window, her arms spread and her jacket open to reveal the cheerleading uniform, she almost looked like Holly.

Zack clicked the safety on the gun and stuck it the waistband of his jeans. He pulled the promise ring from his jacket pocket and dropped it on the girl.


The Promise Ring by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://twitter.com/timagne.

Week Fiction 03: Girl in the Sandwich Shop

There are two types of guys I don’t date: customers and comedians.

I stay the hell away from guys who perform at the comedy night where I do stand-up each week. And pretty much any local comedian. Don’t get me wrong – If I ever ran into Seth Rogen, I’d be all over him.

‘Customers’ is just guys from the deli where I make sandwiches. Nobody’s ever asked me out after my stand-up routine, but if a guy did I might think about it. Hell, I thank God every week for the 20-or-so people who show up, especially the fresh faces. I wish they would let me pass out fliers at the deli.

My theory about the sandwich shop is that half the customers come for the pastrami – the owners make it themselves by hand, and it’s fucking great. New Yorkers have told me it’s the best they’ve ever had. The other half come to stare at my tits when they think I’m not looking. My double D’s may not be as legendary as the meat, but they’re about as good as the tech geeks in downtown Portland are going to see from the time they punch in to the time they get home to their Internet porn.

The twins make for some easy jokes. Good tips, too, when I wear a low-cut shirt under the apron.

It’s also the biggest problem with my stand-up. Guy who runs the comedy night at the bar by my apartment once introduced me as “Oregon’s reigning queen of tit jokes.” Blonde with big boobs jokes about being a blonde with big boobs, laughter ensues. Blonde with big boobs jokes about anything else, crickets.

Wednesdays are comedy nights, so I got a little distracted after yesterday’s lunch rush, going over some jokes in my head as I wiped down slicer station. When I looked back over the counter, I saw the inspiration for my new material.

Roy. Roy the regular. Roy who doesn’t like rye.

Wasn’t sure if he was a pastrami guy or a tit guy, but I was leaning pastrami. Big guy, I’d say about 30 years old, with a little bit of a white-guy afro, a beard and glasses. Comes in for a late lunch once or twice a week, sits at a table by himself and talks on his iPhone headset. Looks like he’s talking to himself, but I think he calls his mom.

“Hey Roy,” I said. “Pastrami Swiss on wheat, mac salad?”

“Oh my God, you have that here? Because that is like my favorite.” Big, hammy Roy. Always good for a smile.

He was wearing a green T-shirt with turtles on it under a faded black zip-up hoodie. Brown cargo shorts and hiking boots, kind of the relaxed version of the standard-issue boutique tech company uniform.

I dress nicer than most of the tech guys downtown, and I wear an apron with grease on it. For all I know, Roy could be the CEO of Facebook.

I wrapped up the sandwich, put a scoop of macaroni salad in a Styrofoam cup and went to ring Roy up since the cashier was on break.

He handed me his card before I had his total. “That’s all?” I asked.

“And a regular Pepsi.” He dropped a dollar bill in the tip jar. I only ring him up some of the time, but he always tips a buck in cash, even when he pays with a card.

After he slid his worn-out wallet back into his pocket, he hesitated to grab his lunch. He was suddenly quiet, rocking back on his heels when most of the time he’d be joking around with me.

“Not hungry, big guy?”

He slid his hand into his back pocket and pulled out a purplish CD with a Post-It on the back. He set it on the counter and grabbed his bag.

“That’s for you,” he said. “There’s a, um, good song on there. I thought you should check it out.”

My new comedy bit crept up in my mind. In downtown Portland, you can tell a tech guy’s seniority by the stains on his T-shirt.

I’ve been making sandwiches for two sad years, long enough to know when a customer is about to ask me out. And I have the aforementioned rule: I don’t date customers. But I couldn’t just burn the poor bastard. I panicked. Maybe it was out of guilt.

“If you want to hang out later, I’m doing stand-up at Shakey’s tonight. Show starts at nine. Bring a bunch of friends and order a lot of drinks.”

He scratched his beard with his free hand. “I didn’t know you did stand-up. That’s awesome. I’ll really try to make it.”

I always figured Roy came for the pastrami as opposed to the boobs, but on my counter next to the horseradish sat a shrink-wrapped love note from a big, geeky admirer. Flowery letters on the album cover said Mike Doughty, Haughty Melodic.

I turned it over and looked at the yellow Post-It. Track 9 – Roy. I peeled it off and scanned the track list. The song was called Sunken-Eyed Girl.

I never heard of this guy, and my eyes are not fucking sunken.


I usually have bad sets on nights when it rains. Last night started as your standard drizzle, but it was windy enough that my hair went insane.

Dusty, the bar manager who emceed the show, told me he expected a good crowd because the bar had just launched a rainy-day drink special. Sure enough, almost 40 people came in out of the rain to get cheap High Life pitchers.

And almost 40 people laughed at the bit about the stains. No stains: College intern. Don’t worry – he’ll spill bong water on his shirt before the day is over. I even got some chuckles as I ran down my list of wardrobe tips for doing business in Portland. Important client meeting: North Face Fleece.

I finished big with some big-tit classics and stepped off the stage to the loudest applause of my life. In the back of the bar, I saw a skinny guy in a red Adidas jacket run his hands through his thinning buzz cut as he hunched over one of the high-top tables. Kevin, the first guy who told me I was funny. The reason I don’t fucking date comedians.

I didn’t even stick around long enough to bitch Dusty out for letting that bastard into the bar. Kevin, who once opened for Harlan Williams in Seattle. Most likely, he was too drunk to drive back to Beaverton or wherever the fuck he lives now, looking to crash at my apartment and get laid if I’d let him.

I grabbed my bag from behind the bar and bolted. Fuck the rain, I thought, and fuck Kevin for ruining such a great night.

My jacket was almost useless on the walk, and I was dripping wet by the time I got back to the apartment. I knew that any minute Kevin would be calling, texting, banging on the door. But I wasn’t going to be the dumb bitch who lets him in.

After I stripped off the wet clothes and dried off a little, I checked my phone. Amazing it still worked after all that rain.

One text from Kevin: New stuff not bad.

I didn’t hear from him again.


That brings me to today. Lunch rush is over at the deli, and I’m leaning on the counter, exhausted and wishing it weren’t so goddamn sunny outside when the bells on the door jingle and in walks Roy. If he had cut his hair or shaved, I might not recognize him in this black three-piece suit.

Roy the regular, looking like some kind of mafia enforcer in his badass threads. And then I realize he must have seen the show last night.

“You know,” he says, “when you throw a guy under the bus for a laugh, the least you can do is buy him a beer after.”

“I was describing like 90 percent of everyone who comes in here.”

He scratches his beard again. “Come on. Turtle shirts?”

I don’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, Roy. I should have looked for you. I kind of freaked out after the set and had to leave.”

“Did you at least listen to the song?”

Fuck. I didn’t, and now he can tell I didn’t because I’m standing here frozen. “I don’t know why you think my eyes look bad. Who’s Mike Dowdy anyway?”

He shakes his head. “Doughty. Do you remember Soul Coughing?”

Crickets. I turn around and make him his pastrami Swiss on wheat with macaroni salad. Like always, I put it in a white paper sack and hand it to the cashier. Roy’s not moving to the register.

“Look, Roy, I’m not going to go out with you just because of some magical song.”

“I know,” Roy says, looking away and rocking back on his feet again. Then he stops, looks me in the eye and says, “But I’m glad I gave you the CD. Because I still had a pretty good time last night. And even though I get reamed in your act, at least you’re thinking about me.”

I can feel myself blushing as he walks to the cashier. He pays, he tips, and I’m thinking I have to listen to Sunken-Eyed Girl. He’s coming back. Without the beard, he’d look a lot like Seth Rogen circa 40-Year-Old Virgin.

“You’re really funny, Jenny,” he says as he looks at me through those too-small glasses. “But if I get stains on this suit, I’m gonna blame you for building a sloppy sandwich.”


Girl in the Sandwich Shop by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://twitter.com/timagne.

Week 02 notes: Settlers of Catan fan fiction

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal says German board game Settlers of Catan is all the rage among cool kids and CEO-types in Silicon Valley. I've been playing it too—a couple times a month at my friend Darrell's house.

Amid all the trading of wheat and sheep, I had to stop and wonder if Darrell and those CEOs ever stopped thinking about strategy long enough to consider the people who live in those tiny buildings and work tirelessly to deliver their precious resources.

It's a rough life, probably a lot like the ones in this week's story.

If you've never played Settlers, I'd encourage you to check it out. And I apologize if this story doesn't make any sense to you.

Also, I was messing around with the currently no-frills site and added a banner graphic. I stuck those labels on a stack of old manuscripts from my undergraduate creative writing classes. That bag of papers is a haunting reminder of my creative shortcomings in post-collegiate adulthood.

Week Fiction 02: Ore

The graybeard miner’s neck and shoulders ached as he rested his forearms upon the bar. The great hall poured ale and whiskey for the miners, the field hands and sometimes soldiers after the day’s supper.

Perhaps, the miner thought, a flagon or two would fill his belly soothe his aches. Supper had been little more than bread and a thin gravy. He waved a calloused finger to signal the barmaid as his thoughts drifted back to hearty meals of lamb pies, more than a man could eat after a day in the mines. In his youth, he and his brothers would gorge themselves until they could barely walk back to their quarters, and the foreman would scold them for oversleeping the following day.

Alas, it had been ages since shepherds of the clan’s eastern settlements had brought such bounty to his city. The miner had heard rumors of robbers in those pastures, but he suspected the shepherds were careless layabouts, ignoring their flocks as the rest of the clan wanted for wool and meat.

The younger barmaid brought tall wooden mugs of cloudy, golden wheat ale to the field hands at the opposite end of the bar. The bread, the whiskey and indeed the ale were fruits of their hard work, and the graybeard nodded their way in approval. They were young as well, tan and dressed in bright blue tunics. One of them will bed this young barmaid, the miner thought.


The miner tugged at the iron brooch that fastened a tattered wool cloak around his neck, the clan’s proud blue long faded to a gray much like his beard. His hair had once been as black as the ore he took from the caverns, and he had once bedded a young barmaid after a substantial haul.

He felt a familiar touch on the back of his arm.

“There you are,” said the older barmaid as she set the large iron flagon in front of him. The miner studied the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes as she smiled at him and tried to remember her face as he had taken her. She still had bosoms fit for a miner’s hands, but had she ever been beautiful? The memory, too, had faded.

At least she had remembered to bring him an iron cup, one of only a few remaining from the year of the great haul, when the clerics brought word from Darrell that the settlement between the quarries and the wheat field would be made into the clan’s first great city.

This was a fine ale, but a wooden cup would sour it. The expertly crafted iron mug was cold to the lips, and it awakened a hint of far-off berries as the miner drank. Too fast, he knew.

The door of the great hall creaked, and the sun’s last light shone through its opening. The field hands hushed as a tall, thin man in cleric’s robes pushed the door closed. The clunk of his boots on the wood floor filled the hall as he approached the bar. His blue hood hung over his eyes as he slid onto the stool next to the miner, but the hood’s opening revealed the clean-shaven mouth of a man no older than those field hands.

Too many children in the hall tonight, the miner thought as he emptied his cup.

“Whiskey,” said the cleric.

“And another ale,” the miner barked.

The young barmaid brought the cleric’s whiskey in a small iron goblet. Without the courtesy of a warm touch, she turned to the miner. “No more ale for you. You’ve had your ration.”

The cleric raised his hand and pointed a long finger at the girl. “The wheat harvest was bountiful. Let every man who comes this night drink his fill.”

“Does Darrell will this, brother?” the barmaid asked.

The cleric hunched his shoulders and wrapped a hand around the goblet. “Aye,” he whispered, and downed the whiskey in a single swallow.

The pretty young barmaid picked up the goblet and the miner’s mug.

“Darrell is kind,” the miner said. “A shame the men of my crew have retired for the night.”

“A man who drinks alone is a man who has lost faith.”

“You look as lonely as I,” the miner said as the barmaid returned with the drinks. He waited until she turned away. “Is that why you lie in the name of your lord?”

“My gift to you and your city, man of iron. Besides, you will not thirst for ale tomorrow.”

The miner shook with a bitter laugh and drank deep from his ale. This boy had never put axe to tree as a lumberjack of the southern settlement. He had never dug clay from the hills, swung scythe in the fields or even shorn a sheep. He could not know how much ale it took to shrink the knot in a miner’s shoulder after a long, dark day with a pickaxe.

A huzzah erupted from the far end of the bar as the old barmaid slid fresh wooden mugs to the field hands. Perhaps one of them would bed her, too, and promise her things. It was a good harvest – a smart man could set aside some grain for himself. At long last, a man would steal her away to the coast where he could trade for lumber, build a house and settle as a free man. Free from the chill of the mines. Free from the clerics and the confounding will of their false lord.

The graybeard did not know if the old barmaid ever believed the promises, but in the dark of her quarters she would trace her finger over a man’s chest as he whispered them to her. She would tell no one of such words, not even if robbers raided and stole everything a man needed to make good on them.

The barmaids poured themselves whiskey in small wooden cups, giggling all the while.

The blue of the elder’s dress was as bright as the color on her counterpart. Was she so old that a man could not get her with child?

“I see the way you look at the barmaid,” the cleric said. “You have wanted for yourself. A sin.”

“I have worked for the tribe.”

The cleric threw back another whiskey. “For the tribe, indeed. But have you worked for Darrell?”

“It is your job to see that the tribe does Darrell’s will, cleric. Mine is to bring you ore to build cities and raise armies.”

“Have you tried this whiskey?” the cleric asked without exposing his eyes. “I believe it is the finest whiskey our tribe has ever tasted. Barmaid! Two whiskeys.”

The old barmaid set two iron cups down and touched the miner’s arm again, lingering a second longer than before. Strong hands, the miner thought, but soft.

For a young cleric, the man knew his whiskey – the miner’s first sip went down smooth and sweet and left a pleasant warmth in his belly.

When the miner looked back, he saw his barmaid touching the arm of one of the field hands. Suddenly, the great hall shook with a clap of thunder and the sound of snapping timbers. The cleric chuckled and downed the rest of his whiskey.

The miner rose from his stool and wobbled for a moment. How much ale? He steadied himself and turned to the cleric, who did not look up from the bar. The field hands shouted at one another as the miner grabbed the cleric by his robes.

“What is happening here?”

“A red tribe has built two great cities on the island’s northern shore. I have heard one even has a library. The tribe has three more settlements inland, and their knights have surpassed ours in number.”

The miner had never thought much of the other tribes. When he was a youth, the clerics had told his settlement that Darrell was at war with the other lords. Darrell needed resources to defeat them, and Darrell would abandon the tribe if the war was lost. Surely the tales were just myths, stories to scare the men into working harder.

The ground shook, and the miner dropped the cleric to the wooden floor. The old barmaid stumbled, spilling ale all over the field hands’ side of the bar. She staggered back, knocking the young girl to the ground. The miner held his footing long enough to reach across the bar and grab his old lover’s arm.

The floor tilted toward him as the whole city seemed to lift away from the earth. He caught the barmaid in his arms as he fell back over his stool and held her as they slid across the floor of the great hall.

He gazed into her face again. The thing was a mess of terror and sweat and deep lines. What kind of man would want this?

The cleric coughed as iron and wood mugs clattered across the floor. The hall shifted again, and the great door swung open wide. A yellow light flooded the hall. The graybeard miner let go his barmaid and stared into it.

For the briefest of moments, he saw the face of a disappointed young man.


Ore by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://twitter.com/timagne.

Week 01 notes

Welcome to what I should probably call the public beta of Week Fiction. One of these days, I'll be publishing these short stories across multiple platforms in more readable formats (anybody interested in Kindle?). For now, I'm just trying to get things rolling.

Every Monday in 2010, I'll be posting a new piece of short fiction. I pretty much stole the idea from Jonathan Coulton, who recorded a new piece of music each week for his "Thing-a-Week" podcast in 2005.

I fancy myself a talented writer of short stories. I wrote some good ones in college, but I spent so much time with full-time jobs and video games over the last 5 1/2 years that I hadn't written one bit of fiction. Figure it's time to put up or shut up.

The point here is to entertain my friends and (I hope) some strangers while proving to myself that adulthood and a nine-to-five haven't snuffed out the creative spark.

And so I present "Wanksgiving," a cautionary tale that taps into the emotional vulnerability of college-age males who feel unloved. In this case, I came up with a title I thought was funny, and the story kind of evolved from there.

Cheers, courage and thanks for reading,

Tim Agne

Week Fiction 01: Wanksgiving

Abby crossed her arms as she leaned against the frame of my open dorm-room door, and I could tell by her little half smile that she was up to something.

“So,” she said, “I’ve decided to stay in town for Thanksgiving.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. The original Wanksgiving was dorm legend by now. This year we already had six confirmed participants, with two more possibles. Three of those guys were freshmen, and I had to imagine one of them told the girls. It could have been Joe. Hell, it could have been anybody. Abby has ways.

“Go home,” I told her. “Eat turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie and whatnot. Spend time with the fam.”

“They’re going to Wisconsin, Bryan. Last-minute trip. My grandma guilted everybody into it.”

“You hate Wisconsin in the winter.”

“I told them not to buy me a ticket.”

Maybe she didn’t know after all. “It won’t be much fun around here,” I said. “We’ll mostly be hanging out in our rooms. Playing video games or working on homework.”

“Yeah, I heard about what you guys do in your rooms.”

Fuck.


I sympathized with Abby. The whole reason I was staying in Tempe for Thanksgiving was because last year my parents planned a scuba-diving trip to Mexico. They figured their college-freshman son would be fine because he was coming home three weeks later after finals. But times like that I guess you just want the comforts of home.

Instead, I woke up Thanksgiving morning and found comfort in a dorm room to myself, a fast Internet connection and a tube of sunscreen. Then after a couple Pop Tarts and some SportsCenter, I did it again.

By the time Joe from across the hall called to see if I wanted to split a pizza, I was up to three. Turns out Joe’s morning had gone pretty much the same.

So we decided to make it a contest. Joe wanted to call it Spanksgiving, but we decided Wanksgiving was funnier. I won 9-8 after a late-night rally with an assist from an old VHS tape I found in my roommate’s desk drawer.

Anyway, this year was going to be a traditional family dinner back in Dallas, and I was going to stick it to them all by staying in Arizona and defending the title.


Abby had books sprawled all over the lounge table when I stepped off the dorm elevator the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I was hoping I could avoid her long enough to take the black plastic bag I was carrying upstairs and stash it in my room.

“Your roommate went home,” she said. “Said he was pissed at you for leaving the door unlocked. What’s in the bag?” I never even saw her look up.

“DVDs.” Please don’t ask.

“What’d ya get?”

Two classy movies, the kind with good production value and A-list starlets and plots that almost make sense. Also a lube the lady at the adult store said would never get sticky. I had spent way too much.
“They’re for the thing.”

“For WANKS-giving?” She scrunched up her face. “Gross. Why are boys so obsessed with porn anyway?”

“Because unlike real life, the girls aren’t total teases.” I couldn’t believe I said it. I had just spent the better part of a four-mile bike ride wondering how last Thanksgiving would have been if Abby were my age. Bundling up in oversize hoodies, walking around the deserted campus, sitting down to dinner at an actual restaurant. Maybe this year I’d have been flying to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving, and maybe I could convince Abby the cold wasn’t so bad.

Or maybe not. I hadn’t figured out how we managed to ditch Joe in that fantasy. Didn’t matter anyway – Abby was a freshman.

“I want in,” she said. “How’s that for a tease?”

“No way. Women have an unfair advantage. It’s a shame you couldn’t organize a ladies division, though. Just thinking about it would net me like two points.”

“You’re sick.” Abby pouted and bit her bottom lip. I didn’t say anything – I was mostly trying to remember the lip thing for later. “Fine, just leave me all alone on Thanksgiving with nothing to do.”

“You can be my personal assistant.”

“Then you’d have an unfair advantage. I want to be the judge.”

“OK, now you’re the sick one.”

“And I’ll give the winner a real hand job,” she said. “Am I still a tease?”

“That’s awful generous. Topless?”

“Depends who wins.”

“I’m the defending champion, you know.”

“Then I’ll wear a sweatsuit. And those yellow dish gloves.”

“Ooh. I’ll make sure to get some scented candles and mood music,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me …”

“Gotta go practice?”

“Oh no. I’m fasting. I’m gonna win this thing.” I spun on my flip-flop and headed for the stairs. I wondered if the store would let me return the movies.


I remember laying on my top bunk, hot and itchy, failing at sleep like a kid before Christmas. I remember wadding up my blue comforter and throwing it across the room and then trying to read one of my roommate’s Lord of the Rings books. I had forbidden myself from the one thing I knew would help me sleep, so I sat there. Wide awake, trying not to look at the green alarm clock digits that seemed to light up the entire room.

And then the banging on the door.

“Dude!” It sounded like Joe.

I looked at the clock: 12:14 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. I slid off the bunk bed and found a footing on my roommate’s desk chair. I stepped down and on my way to the door hit myself in the chest as hard as I could. I let out a gravely yell.

“You awake, man?”

I opened the door. Joe was standing there barefoot in ASU basketball shorts and a white undershirt. He hadn’t even bothered to put on the hat he always wears, but I knew he had been awake for hours.
“She said she’d disqualify me if I woke you up. I was never here.”

Joe explained I was already down four points to Eli, a freshman. Abby was up at 8 to verify this, using a system that involved showing her a tissue and then flushing it down one of the community toilets as she supervised. Pretty smart, really.

“I only got two myself, feel like I’m slipping …” I slammed the door in Joe’s face. Couldn’t step outside again until I was ready to log a point, and that first one of the day always takes a second.

Usually, anyway. The four days of fasting and the extra rest must have paid off, because I was walking to Abby’s room with a crumpled paper towel in my hand within five minutes.

She sat with her legs crossed in a dish chair outside her door, looking through some celeb magazine. She was wearing the black yoga pants she always wore around the dorms with the waistband rolled down, this time paired with low-cut tank top and a quite visible black bra. The pants proved she still had the legs and ass of a high-school track athlete, but her boobs were looking bigger than I remembered. I guess the freshman 15 were being kind to her.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she said, her big brown eyes peering up from behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses I knew she didn’t need to see. She had pulled her neck-length, streaky blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, and she was wearing shiny pink lip gloss. I think she was trying her best to look effortlessly hot, and it was working. “Looks like you’re on the board.”

“Count it,” I said. “I was just resting up for my big day.”

“I dunno, you’ve got some stiff competition. Eli wants it bad, and Martin is closing in. I don’t think you can hang with these freshmen.”

“Please.”

“Well whatever, let’s go flush that thing. Keep this world safe from millions of tiny Bryans.”


I kept at it until long after the sun went down. I’d keep the movies rolling on the TV while poking around the Internet for more videos or searching for nude pics of any celebrities who popped into my head. I didn’t eat anything, but I drank Gatorade and protein shakes and popped a vitamin every couple hours. Abby hung around to tally every last point, and when the going got tough, I let my mind wander back to the black bra and the yoga pants.

I was a machine.

Just after 9 o’clock, I wiped up my twelfth score. It was enough to tie Martin, who had taken the lead in the late afternoon and broken my old record around dinnertime. It was also starting to hurt a little, and my room smelled like a zoo. I decided I’d log the point, and then take a quick shower.

I told Abby as much. She was working on her laptop in the lounge. As she walked back to tally my point on the whiteboard outside her room, I could tell she was losing interest. Honestly, I was amazed she hung in as long as she did. Whatever she was trying to prove, I didn’t think for a minute that it would result in me claiming any kind of prize.

I was the only guy using the showers at the time, so stood and relaxed under the water as steam filled the stall. My back and shoulders ached from sitting in a desk chair all day, and when I finally got around to washing up, I gave myself a little tug.

Nothing.

I had beaten myself lifeless and limp, and I knew I wasn’t going to recover in time to keep pace. That freshman fuck Martin would notch one more for the win, and he’d be the one teasing Abby about the prize for the rest of the year.

I squeezed and tried so desperately to picture that black bra peeking out. I recreated so many of the day’s movie scenes in my mind, all with me and Abby. Sometimes me and two Abbys.
Still nothing.

I killed the water and, sore and defeated, dried myself off. I tied the towel around my waist, threw on a t-shirt and walked back to my room. I had left the door unlocked again. Good thing my roommate isn’t around, I thought.

And then there she was, sitting Indian-style on my roommate’s bottom bunk, staring at the movie I had left on the TV. She had ditched the fake glasses and covered up that wonderful tank top with an old sweatshirt.

“I don’t know what’s weirder,” Abby said, “That they actually make zombie porn, or that you get off watching it.”

“What are you doing in here?”

“I decided it’s time for your prize.”

“Bullshit. I’m only tied for first, and I don’t think I can do anymore. You should be in Martin’s room.”

She shook out a little silent laugh. “Eli caught Martin blowing his nose and trying to pass it off for points. After that, everybody kind of lost interest and decided to go out for dinner. I think they’re at a movie now, and they’re trying to get some booze for later. I’ll probably just go to bed.”

“If Martin is disqualified, then I just jerked off like three more times than I needed to. I’m seriously worried I did some permanent damage.”

“That’s a shame, because check these out.” She held up a pack of dishwashing gloves. Pink.

“Abby, why are you doing this?”

“Oh God. If this is where you decide it’s time tell me how you really feel…”

“I like you. And I’ve been a complete dick. I should have taken you out tonight. We could have hung out and had a really great day.”

“I’m leaving,” Abby said as she ducked out from under my bunk. That’s when I noticed the yoga pants again. I could feel myself springing back to life.

I blocked the door. “OK wait. Your parents ruined Thanksgiving, and you want to get back at them by acting like some kind of sick degenerate.”

“I want to go to bed.”

“That’s why I started this stupid tradition in the first place. And, I dunno, maybe you want to prove to me that you’re not a total tease.”

“Seriously, move.”

“If you leave, then you are a total tease. And I bet your parents would be proud of how much homework you did today.”

“You seriously want me to do this?”

“It’ll be the thirteenth best I’ve had all day.”


I never participated in another Wanksgiving, although I hear Eli smashed my record the following year. Nothing else happened with Abbey, either, and I know it’s my fault. I was a complete jerk-off to her. Yeah, that’s the punchline.

I take a little solace in my back-to-back championships. And while I couldn’t talk Abby into ditching the pink gloves, I did convince her to strip back down to that glorious little tank top.


Wanksgiving by Tim Agne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://twitter.com/timagne.