Play Now Act Now May Winners

Every month, Trespass Magazine will publish winners of Play Now Act Now’s Microfiction category. We want to congratulate Veronica Hope and Bernadette Silner who are the May winners. They have both won $100 in cash each and have progressed to the Play Now Act Now final to take place in October.

For more information on Play Now Act Now and how you can be a part of the competition, visit: http://playnowactnow.com.au/

Microfiction Official Selection

Daily Unsocial Networking

by Veronica Hope of Kensington

Unsocial networking

One wine, two wine, three wine, four.
Dinner wine, work wine, Sunday wine, more.

Alcoholics rarely recognise the condition. They’re escaping their inherent thoughts. Thoughts they’ve thought since they were young. They are running from their view of the world. They are running from their own brain.

The Sunday Session
Relaxation, drinks, sun, friends
How could it be wrong?

Try convincing a loved one that alcohol isn’t always a friend. It’s like telling a smitten teenager their lover is bad news. Futile.
“But dot dot dot spends time with wine.”
“Dot dot dot doesn’t cry each time.”

“With four hundred Facebook friends and one hundred phone numbers… I’m here alone. What in my life has gone wrong?”
Might just have a few wines.

There once was a boy named Jake
Made mistake then mistake then mistake
Without time to think
He mixed up a drink
And found a way to escape.

There once was a chicky named Shirl
Who was quite a beautiful girl
She didn’t believe it
And drank to relieve it
Was never as cute mid-hurl.

But both of these people had friends
Their conditions had means to ends
They sucked up their worth
Gave the bottle a girth
And lived with the drink, just as friends.

Microfiction People’s Choice Award

The Unsociables

by Bernadette Silner of Leichardt

I’m the most unsocial kind of person in the most morose and darkest sense. No sociability for me, no sir. I’d rather be thrown into the pit of hell, than ‘up’ my tally of friends.

This is wrong though, you see. I should know – my mother spent her life pleading with me to change.

‘My daughter has a problem’ she’d wail.

My problem, you see, was simple. I was defective. Somewhere down the line I had broken, and hadn’t been fixed, and here I was left stuck with the break. Like some poor mobster, forced to carry his guts along the sidewalk after being shot in the stomach by some Johnny Two-Shoes.

I took it upon myself to try and diffuse the pain. Anything worked. Prozac, Lexapro, Alcohol – more, more, more. Then more wasn’t enough. Then I crashed and turned inside out and the unsociable lonely heartache swallowed me up.

But it’s really ok, because we’ll just roll on through a heady sea of wistful loneliness, those other unsociables and I. Struggling to stay afloat in a world forcing friendships. We can push against the tide, but only for so long. Soon we’ll all set ourselves on fire just to make some space of our own. Burning for freedom. Burning for silence. Burning just to be left alone.

Then we’ll all just sink into oblivion. Those sociable sociables will swallow us up. WHOLE. One gulp, and we’ll be gone.