We are excited to announce the winners of the November 2023 Chattanooga Writers' Guild Monthly Contest is Brock Ward with the submission "Death's Embrace" and runner-up is John C. Mannone with the submission "The Family I Choose."
Death's EmbraceIn tarot, Death signals a transition, a change, the end of something old and the start of something new. This skeleton on the card is not something to be afraid of, but something to embrace. As I’m told this, under the sweltering heat of Chattanooga’s November sun, I can’t help but be irritated by Rider–Waite’s artwork. Death looks nothing like this fortune teller’s card.
I first saw Death when I was a tween. In my bedroom, I picked up toys to act out a story. I quickly realized, however, that I couldn’t hear their voices. I was forcing dialogue and manufacturing cheap obstacles for these bits of plastic to overcome. In my hands, these figures weren’t alive anymore. That day was the last time I picked them up, and that night was the first time I saw her. In the mirror, as I brushed my teeth, behind me a black mist silently shifted. She billowed over my shoulder and around my chest.
The fortune teller pries for additional information about my personal life, but I’m watching a family playing in the aquarium plaza’s stream. The children stomp through the water as fast as they can, striving to maximize both speed and splash size. The parents think they’ve found a private moment, and exchange a brief kiss. I smile, then tell the fortune teller something inconsequential but embarrassing. A gift, something for her to work with.
The next time I came across Death I was in college. I was a sophomore and was home for the holidays. Sitting in the kitchen, my dad joked that if I ate more carrots growing up then I wouldn’t need glasses now. I let him know that carrots improving vision was a lie the British told. They didn’t want the Germans to know they had radar, so they bragged about carrots instead. After saying this, I glanced up and noticed Dad looked both quite old and remarkably young. It was as if I had just informed a dying man that Santa Claus wasn’t real. He opened his mouth and Death poured out. She wisped around his unfamiliar expression, muffling his transition to a different topic, and reached toward me.
More tarot cards are flipped. If they are upside down that means they are reversed. I grin at the reversed Hanged Man. Upside down he looks like he’s starring in A Chorus Line. An upright Hanged Man means letting go. But not when he’s in A Chorus Line—then he represents a resistance to new perspectives. Behind the fortune teller, a hip guitarist begins playing. I find myself wondering if he’s an Austin transplant, then chide myself for the xenophobic thought.
The last time Death visited me was in my late twenties. I was in the living room fiddling with my ring. I couldn’t find my partner’s cat, but I wanted to say goodbye. She was scared that I was looking for her—she probably thought I wanted to take her to the vet. In reality, I wanted to do my best to explain divorce to a cat. I needed this tiny fluffy thing to understand that we’d never see each other again but that I loved her very much. I wiped frustrated tears away, turned, and opened the door to leave. Death filled the doorway, a black curtain swaying towards me.
The full tarot spread has been revealed, and I feel a pang of hunger. I think to myself that walking downtown has earned me some ice cream, so I thank the fortune teller, tip them a five, and stand. A sharp sting shoots up my leg. As I wiggle my slumbering foot, attempting to rush blood to it as quickly as possible, the fortune teller leans in.
“Death comes to us more than once,” they say.
“What?”
“The tarot reminds us we are in a constant state of death. The person you used to be is gone, the new you is here only for now. Death can be what you choose, and mourning is natural.”
A nearby dog barks a little too aggressively, and I shift my gaze from the fortune teller’s eyes to an Australian Shepherd and their human. The man pulling the leash is matching his dog’s energy, over apologizing. The woman who was barked at is comforting the man, repeating, “It’s fine!” I look back to the fortune teller, whose eyes haven’t moved.
“I’m not in mourning.”
The fortune teller shrugs and thanks me for stopping by. I walk to get my ice cream but don’t stop once I reach the store. I want to keep moving. I continue on to my car. On the drive home, I pass Riverview Park. Why is there new playground equipment? Why am I upset about a new slide?
I greet my cat as I walk in the door, and ask him, “Why would I be mourning?” In response, he shows me a dried hairball on my comforter. Moments later, I lean against the shaking washing machine and scroll through historic fragments hidden away within social media.
I was a child at the Blue Hole with my family, yearning to be back home playing video games.
I was a fourteen-year-old who felt stupid in my middle school polo and khakis.
I was a teen taking prom photos at the train station. I considered myself an adult.
I was a twenty-year-old, hoping to enjoy my first college party but finding only social anxiety.
I was a spouse showing my partner creepy Christmas dolls at the top of Lookout Mountain.
With a shuddering breath, I put my phone in my pocket. I lift my head, and Death hovers in the center of my home. The cloak of her black mist flutters as she stares back into me. I rub away my own mist that’s gathering in my eyes and shake my head. I push myself off the washing machine and stride up to Death, face-to-face with her void.
My mind races. How can I best let her know how little she means to me? While I plan my attack, Death drifts her haze around me. Feeling her darkness closing in, I am reminded of every other time she’s visited me. All the other times she reached out to me. This time, for the first time, I return her hold. I wrap my arms around her and lean into her ever-changing form. I embrace Death, who holds me softly, and in her arms I mourn.
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Brock Ward is a Chattanooga native who has been writing his whole life. At the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Ihe created a Bachelor’s Degree through the College Scholars Program, which combined English, Psychology, and Theatre. While in college, his plays were produced at the Clarence Brown Theatre followed by the KCACTF. A short story of his was also published in the Phoenix Literary Arts Magazine during his time at UT.
After college, he moved to Chicago where he wrote and performed as a student volunteer with The Second City Training Center. Outside of the performing arts, he has written for Chicago start-ups, the city’s mass transit system (the second largest in the country), and a Chattanooga digital marketing agency.
The Family I Chose
The family I chose wasn’t mine. It was the McAndrew’s—ten blocks down from Fernhill Avenue where I lived to Springdale Avenue across the Forest Park golf course. A three-story white house where Mr. and Mrs. Mac lived with their nine kids: Pat, Trudy, Mike, Mary Jo, Ginger, Annette, Deborah, David, and Joanne.
I met Pat in eighth grade at All Saints, a Catholic grade school in Baltimore, MD, but we went to different high schools. One day, he hopped on the bus I was on coming home from Calvert Hall. We yacked a while and rekindled our friendship. He invited me to his house after school. His family welcomed me in as one of their own. And I adopted them. Truth is, I always wanted a large family, but hell, I’d be happy with just a brother. I had two sisters but they were either much younger or much older than me. For all intents and purposes, I was alone. Not that my parents didn’t love me but they don’t count. I’m talking about siblings. (Many years later my mother told me I would’ve had brothers—twins! But she lost them in a miscarriage.)
I went to the McAndrew house often, even to do my homework. I had lots of homework in my senior year in high school but that was true for all those years, and of course, in college, too. Mrs. Mac might have wondered about my home life but she welcomed me to stay for supper many times. I felt a bit guilty, but she never seemed frustrated when I was there. I loved this family, and they loved me.
Over the years, I even got a crush on Mary Jo, and Trudy (not at the same time!), but I was like a “big brother.” But you know what? I really liked that! Later on, they married a couple of good guys. My smiley face appeared. And so did Mike and Ginger. It turned out that Mike liked heavy metal and hard rock-n-roll, too; we often crashed in his basement with our hippy-era lava lamps, sandalwood incense, lavender lights, and a few other things that we shouldn’t have inhaled. David joined us when he was old enough. Mr. and Mrs. Mac never said a word, but occasionally gave us a funny look.
I was kind of a runt, and often bullied; Pat taught me how to box, and when to run, but I was already good at that (Baltimore was a racial hotbed in the sixties)! I remember a wave of angry black faces rising like a tsunami over the golf course green. I couldn’t blame them, Martin Luther King had just been assassinated in Memphis. But we were in the crossfire; so running was the only option.
There were times that the golf course was a place of mischief for us—like when we exploded a cherry bomb in the putting green cup of the 15th hole! Pat and I ran like crazed brothers to avoid the authorities hot on our tail. Thinking back, we did silly, and sometimes dangerous things. But there was never any absence of laughter. Well, almost never.
It was November in the late 60s, and my good friend, Pat, was fighting in Vietnam. That night I attended a concert at Loyola College, the Byrds were performing, and the tune and words of “Turn, Turn, Turn” echoed its prophetic melancholy all the way home. It was great, and I was happy. Until I heard about the fire. The fire that spread into the bedroom where Annette, Deborah, and Joanne slept. Bad wiring the Fire Marshall said. Sparks flew inside the walls in the attic loft of the McAndrew house. Flames jumped out devouring the carpet, drapes... and beds, as well as ravaging the only escape route. Mr. Mac, and the girls’ brother, Mike, suffered pretty bad burns trying to save them. They failed. Mr. Mac’s hair turned white overnight. And Mrs. Mac became reclusive for months. I think it killed her too, not right away, but years later after so many post-traumatic stress nightmares concerning the fire, which probably elevated the risk of her cognitive ability. She died way too soon from Alzheimer’s.
After I heard the news about the fire, but before going to the McAndrews to give them my condolences, I emptied my tears, but not all of them. After I got there, we shared sorrows; my eyes blurred again. They lost three daughters; I lost three beautiful sisters:
Annette was smart, and even though she was just in eighth grade, she listened attentively to my stories in college, about my wrestling with the math and chemistry. But she loved it when I talked about food and its chemistry. I was studying to become a doctor, a pediatrician. Mr. Mac would tease me by calling my aspiring vocation as glorified plumber’s work. Everyone laughed when they saw me get red in the face; I boisterously denied that assertion. But many years later after I abandoned the idea of going to med school and taught physics to pre-med students aspiring to be doctors, I concurred (no disrespect intended).
Deborah was only 8, and she hated me. Well, at first, for reasons I never understood. Maybe it was because I would mimic her tantrums. But then, just as mysteriously, she mellowed. We became great companions when I visited, but sadly, not too long before the accident. There was no greater honor for me than to be one of her pallbearers.
And Joanne. She was never a terrible two, but definitely a feisty three. She reminded me of my own sister, and perhaps, with those lovely blond curls, of me, when I was a toddler.
I thought about them, and the rest of the McAndrews, as I slowly walked home, kicking stones that I could see under the lamppost lights. They casted long shadows of me. There was a chill in the air and the moon didn’t care. When I got home, I was exhausted from the grief. My mom hugged me, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
I sauntered down the hallway; stopped by my younger sister’s bedroom. Her door was open. I stood there, silent, she on her bed, perplexed, expecting a prank because I would tease her a lot... but not that night.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
My lips pursed, my breathing, labored, I walked over and wrapped my arms around her. In the mirror, I saw that her eyes betrayed the realization that something was wrong, terribly wrong. As we embraced, I managed to free the words stuck in my throat, “I love you, Rose.”
Her mouth still agape, I left her bedroom to ponder my blessings in the privacy of my own room: the families whom I chose... and those who chose me.
A fictionalized story based on true events
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John C. Mannone has poems in Anthology of Appalachian Writers XV [Barbara Kingsver], Red Branch Review, Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. He was awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018).
His full-length collections are Disabled Monsters (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2015), Flux Lines: The Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2022), Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek Publishing, 2023), and Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2024). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. He’s a professor of physics teaching mathematics in East Tennessee.
Congratulations, Brock and John!
The Monthly Contests rotate through a pattern of Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction throughout the year, with a new theme each month.
Go to the 2023 Monthly Contest Series Info page to view the genre and theme for each month.
This contest is free to enter for members of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild. To become a member, click HERE.