The Prolitzer Prize winners, 2011
Thank you for all of your entries, we really enjoyed reading them. The editors
here made a
shortlist of ten pieces and sent them off to New Zealand for our
judge, Stephen Ross, to pick his top three.
Winner
Devil’s Eye, by Barbara Leahy.
Barbara wins £130 and is published in the current issue of Prole, Poetry and Prose.
Runners up
Llosgi (To burn), by Melanie Marshall.
Tongue-Tied, by Kelly Hayes-Raitt
Melanie and Kelly both win £30.
The winning pieces are published below with the judges comments. Barabara's 'Devil's Eye' can also be read in issue 6 of Prole, available here.
Devil's Eye – Winner of the Prolitzer Prize, 2011
Barbara Leahy
Last winter, when Grandad got sick, we had to go to stay with him for a few days. We didn't have a car anymore so Mum took me and Jamie on the train. All the way to Cork Jamie climbed on the seats and pestered Mum for sweets from the trolley. He was only five, a baby really. I was nine, too old for doing the fool. Even Mum said I was the man of the house now.
I turned my back on them both and looked out the window. It was getting dark and I could see my reflection shadowy and dim on the other side of the glass, flying along like a ghost clinging to the speeding train. One day, when we were going to Howth, the train stopped in between stations and the inspector came and told Mum that there was a body on the tracks. We had to get off and go home in a taxi. I wondered what it would be like to run over a body. The train would come off the rails. Or maybe not; bodies were mostly soft after all. It might just feel like a bump and then the train would keep going without anyone noticing. I wondered how far the bloodstains would stretch along the tracks.
Grandad didn't like me. Once I heard him telling Mum to "keep a sharp eye on that one, he has his father's glint." Then Mum caught me listening by the door and sent me out into the garden. I never let on I heard; I knew I'd get him back for it someday.
Grandad lived in a dirty old cottage that smelled funny. When we arrived Mum went around opening all the windows. There were only two rooms downstairs and a kind of bedroom up a wobbly stairs in what was really the attic. The toilet was in a shed outside the backdoor and there was no bath or shower. Mum always tried to clean the place up a bit but then Grandad would get annoyed and tell her to stop fussing.
At night Mum slept on the couch in the front room and I slept with Jamie on an old mattress next to Grandad's bed. Grandad made funny noises as if he was choking while he slept and sometimes he talked in his sleep. There was no electric light in the room and if he needed to go to the outhouse during the night I was supposed to help him down the stairs in the dark. I used to listen to him spluttering and groaning in his sleep and if I heard him heave himself upright I'd shut my eyes tighter and pretend to be sound asleep. Sometimes he'd call my name so loud that Mum could hear; there was nothing for it then but to go. His waxy fingers would clutch my hand and he'd shuffle his way to the stairs, breathing so heavily I could feel my hair ruffling in the draught. In the kitchen-light I would see his shapeless nightshirt riding up above his bony blue-veined knees. I tried not to look as the sagging skin swung loose from his legs as he stepped out into the yard.
On our third day at Grandad's it rained all day. There was no TV to watch and nothing to do. Mum said we were under her feet all day and we should go upstairs to chat to Grandad to give her a break.
Grandad was sitting up in bed with crumbs of toast and something whitish stuck to the side of his mouth. Every now and then he gave a rattling cough, sending spit and crumbs spraying across the bedclothes. I stood as far away from him as I could. Jamie didn't mind about the spit and he started bouncing on the bed. I thought Grandad would get cross but he only laughed his hoarse old laugh and told me to go and get the toy box from under the sink downstairs.
Jamie had never seen it before but I knew the box was boring; it was full of old toys that Uncle Jack and Uncle Michael had when they were small boys. There were tin soldiers with the paint peeling off, a mechanical crane that didn't even work, and a whole lot of marbles that I had never bothered looking at.
For some reason Jamie loved the marbles. He perched on the side of Grandad's bed rolling them around in his hands and letting them drip through his fingers. I watched them form a pool of swirling colours on the stained eiderdown. I had never seen them glow and burn like that before. Grandad wheezed and coughed as he started to explain some of their names to him: ox-blood, purie, devil's eye and tiger. He let him choose his favourite to keep. Then he remembered me and let me choose too. Jamie liked the tiger best but my favourite was the devil's eye. It had a red whirl around the edge and at the centre was a bright yellow eye. If I looked very closely I could see my own eye reflected in the yellow part. When I held it in my palm it looked angry and wild and seemed almost alive. But when I closed my fingers it felt just as cool and smooth to touch as the clear blue purie or the striped tiger.
Then Dr. Carling called to see Grandad, so we took the marbles downstairs and played with them all afternoon. I soon won the tiger from Jamie but he made such a fuss Mum made me let him win it back. I won and lost the ox-blood several times but I never risked the devil's eye; that was too precious to lose. I liked to know it was safe all the time in my pocket, like a secret lucky charm.
Before we went to bed that night, Mum told us that Dr. Carling said Grandad's heart was very weak and he should stay in bed for two more weeks. We'd have to stay to help him out.
“Just two weeks,” she said. “You don't mind, do you, love? You are such a big help to me.”
I hated her for asking me in her pleading voice, the one she used to use with Dad when he got angry. I knew she had already decided we were staying. I turned away from her and kicked the stupid toy box. If Dad was here he'd make her leave, he could always make her do what he wanted. It wasn't fair, she promised it would only be a few days. It just wasn't fair.
That was the last night we spent at Grandad's. I must have been dreaming deeply that night because I never heard him getting up. And he mustn't have called for me very loudly because Mum never heard him either. We heard him fall though. He crashed down the stairs from the first step to the last. I stood at the top of the stairs while Mum dragged blankets from the couch to cover him. She looked up then and saw me watching her.
I heard Grandad moan as I came downstairs. He was lying in a crumpled heap, one leg folded underneath him. His face was greyish and a line of spit hung from his lip to his chin. Mum tried to put a cushion under his head but he moaned again.
"I'm going to Mrs. Dwyer's to call an ambulance," she said. "Stay with him till I get back. Don't let him move."
He clawed at her arm with one of his bony hands and opened his mouth, trying to say something.
"Don't worry, Mum, I'll take care of him."
I sat down on the second step. He lay there staring at me in silence, his lips twitching, his cloudy eyes wide with fear while she hurried next door. I watched him as he lay shivering on the slate floor. I had a feeling we wouldn't have to stay in his house another two weeks after all.
The ambulance arrived within half an hour but Grandad was dead by the time he reached the hospital. We followed on behind in a taxi with Mum. He had been conscious on the journey - the ambulance men told Mum he was rambling that the devil was watching him, the devil's eye was on him. The old fool. It wasn't the devil's eye, it was the ox-blood. When we got back to the house I found it lying innocently where it had rolled into a corner by the kitchen door. I grabbed it fast before Mum saw it. The devil's eye was where it had always been, tucked into my chest pocket, keeping me safe from harm.
Judge’s comments
This is a polished, fully formed, and engaging piece of writing that works on every level. The young narrator's voice is perfectly rendered. We are easily drawn into his world and his observations of it. The conflicting emotions of childhood, family and responsibility, are effortlessly conveyed, and there is a subtext (almost explicit) that teasingly hints at a darker layer to the narrator.
Llosgi(To Burn) – Runner up, Prolitzer Prize 2011
Melanie Marshall
To catch alight but not to burn, that was the trick. The thing Geraint had been seeking his whole career. His quest was to be consumed by fire and the everlasting life it would bring. Professor of Folklore and Early Magic at Amlwch University, he knew all the texts, how it was written in The Celtic Book of Living and Dying, dating back to 43 AD.
He’d related his studies to the ceremonies of Fakirs of India and the forgotten rituals of Kabbalah, but to no avail. He took students on a field trip to Puffin Island, and when the whisky bottle lay drained by the campfire, he suggested they begin chanting. On the Monday he’d faced a lecture theatre of empty seats.
Geraint slaved over articles for specialist necromancy periodicals, botched attempt after botched attempt until he was simmering in his own regrets, the antithesis of an unsuccessful suicidal.
And, when all else failed, he’d pitched his tent high on Penmaenmawr mountain. There under the velour sky he recited the verses exactly as they were written. He sprinkled yellow lichens and lungwort over the carcass of a sheep and sent the match spinning from his hand. Wind aggravated the flames, crept over soiled wool. The reek of barbequed lamb wafted over the village. Criminal damage charges from the farmer put an end to the matter.
This preoccupation left little time for anything else, no wife, no heirs, just a cottage on the beach and a library large enough to provoke envy in an Oxford Don. So when Angharad arrived back in his life one evening, like she’d always been there, he was feeble for her. She stood on the shore hurling a piece of driftwood for her black dog to run after; hair like kelp and peridot eyes. And somewhere, aching in his jaw, thumping in his skull, he saw the girl from school he’d mocked and kissed with equal delight. It was more than a sign, it was a portent. Where had she been since days smoking cigarette butts she’d found on the playing field, their lunchtimes spent huddled by the electric substation, listening to rain fizzing on the wires? He told her immediately of his mission. She did not flinch as others might have done.
“I know what to do,” came her thin voice. What was there to resist?
From the depths of her coat she pulled out a Zippo and a can of lighter fluid. They were teenagers again, no books mattered; there were no words to tether him to the shore. Geraint scanned the mass of beach, mountain and village. The glowing dot on the mountainside was the Pen-Y-Bryn pub, housing the nearest inhabitants.
Angharad poured the liquid over her hand and in one swift movement flicked the lighter. Mouthing rhymes. Eyes fixed on his all the while – not a flicker of pain.
He fought off dismay.
Nice trick. It only burns the fluid; your skin’s not alight.
“Your turn,” she said. He could see the Earth’s core in that smile.
He rolled up his sleeve, her cool white hands steadying the shake.
The fluid coated him, then the ignition, catching on his hairs. No pain, just blue and gold shimmying up his arm. He didn’t know how long had passed when he dropped to his knees and rolled over in the wet sand to the sound of her laughter.
They agreed to meet in the same spot the next night.
Until dawn, nightmares engorged in his bed. Tangled around his bare legs like seaweed, tentacles penetrating him, making him bleed. By dawn, his insides felt as contorted and dry as sand dunes, but the mattress was damp to the touch. He spent the day attempting to read by the window, watching for the demise of the sun. Once the lighthouse rays strobed over Menai straits, Geraint barely remembered to tie his shoelaces. Wind propelled him to the pebbles and sand. By the jetty, Angharad stood, coat buoyant and a jerry can at her feet. The panting shape of the dog fetched planks and MDF boards that were strewn on the beach. Together they heaped the dry bits of wood and branches high in a circle, shaped it like the mountain, left a human-shaped gap in the centre; the aperture through which to be born.
“We’ll meet on the other side,” she told him.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
A douse of petrol hit the back of his throat. Panic tugged at his stomach. She would burn there in front of him. Or worse, be altered. Was there jealousy then, somewhere in the coils of fear?
Geraint stoked the blaze until the lights flicked off at the Pen-Y-Bryn. The moon’s molten wax spilled over the sea. Having Angharad standing over him like that was treading water and not being able to touch the seabed. Weight on his chest. She soaked herself from the can before pouring the remainder over him. A torrent coursed over his hair and ears, stinging, coating, bringing that curative old smell of being caught in his father’s garage, messing with something he didn’t understand.
With rivulets of petrol still running down his face,she called in rounded tones, “Every rock, every sod of earth, every drop of saltwater.” Chanting aloud, English words, Welsh words, words without language. She placed her cold, salted tongue on his. In that kiss, blind creatures stirred beneath the waves, dead things buried in the sand, writhed into life.
The Labrador went first, bounded into the fire. Angharad stepped in after it, into the burning gap at the centre. The fire shimmered, raged. She was encased in flames, yet repelling them. It was difficult to tell where she ended and the fire began, until there was only smoke. Geraint wanted to run in, screaming, abandon all remaining logic. But he’d been waiting his whole life. Very slowly he neared the flames, held his breath. Heat reached into his pores. Through the swathes of smoke, a black puppy sat on the sand.
Breathing again, he passed inside the orange wall. How beautiful, the colours, the searing, dizzying heat. He could not leave, would not. He was immortal, inflammable, beyond. It was hard to remember when he’d last felt joy like this. Cheap polyester melted, muscle buckled and shrank back from bone. He stopped moving, drugged by sweet smoke, pork crackling, singed hair.
On the beach ahead, an image disrupted by rising cinders: a little girl in a dark coat, on all fours, down on her stomach, slithering back into the sea.
The boil and mutation of each cell. The bubble and swell under his eyelids. But then the agony, itching at first, soon thrashing beneath the skin. Flames burst through the cage of his chest and devoured his still-beating heart.
A local man out for an early morning jog dragged a boy of no more than ten years old from a six foot bonfire. His body charred and his flesh still hot to the touch.
Judge’s comments
This is an intriguing and engaging story that works on an almost mystical level, as befitting its subject. There is an assured use of language and imagery, and the story successfully functions according to its own internal logic and flow. It is a rewarding read.
Tongue-Tied – Runner up, Prolitzer Prize, 2011
Kelly Hayes-Raitt
The one I want to wrap in my arms and bring home is Nebras.
I didn’t even know her name when I return to Iraq shortly after the assault on Baghdad. I am armed only with a photo of a beggar touching her nose with her tongue.
I had met her a few months before when I’d traveled to Iraq with a women’s delegation, just five weeks before the U.S. bombings and invasion. Unfazed by impending disaster, the little girl, old enough to be in primary school, had begged for handouts in a popular market. I had taught her to touch her nose with her tongue. We’d teased; clearly she wasn’t used to an adult making faces at her and delighting in her company. She’d followed me around the souk nearly swallowing her tongue in laughter as she imitated my nose-touching stunt.
She was cold. The dirty scarf wrapped loosely around her neck neither protected her from the chill nor hid her calculating ability to work the shoppers. Without a translator, the most I gathered was a photo of a gleeful girl with laughing eyes and an incredibly acrobatic tongue.
When I return to Iraq five months later to find how war had touched the people who had so deeply touched me, translators are reluctant to take me to the souk. The mood in Baghdad has shifted; gunfire is heard nightly and no one wants to be responsible for my harm. Finally, the day before I am to leave, I convince one translator to take me “shopping.” I canvass the cluttered shops for hours, flashing the little girl’s photo.
“Yes, that’s Nebras.” Finally, a shopkeeper recognizes the girl whose deep, brown eyes had humanized the smoldering CNN newscasts that absorbed my life back home. “But I haven’t seen her in a while. Not since before the war.”
I catch my breath. I had just learned Nebras’ name. She can’t be one of the thousands of nameless Iraqis we dismissively call “collateral damage.” I step out into the bright sunlight and my translator catches my arm.
“We need to leave,” he insists. The equally insistent gunfire across the river rattles my nerve. I feel conspicuous in the souk’s crowded narrow alleys. People dart, avoiding eye contact. Shops close prematurely. Barricaded soldiers seem hyper-alert in the edgy heat.
As we worm our way back to our car, I stifle my creeping panic. Behind me, a commotion suddenly erupts and I turn around to see a crowd of men shoving toward me. I freeze. The shopkeepers part, revealing the terrified eyes of a familiar elfish girl they drag toward me by the scruff of her T-shirt.
Nebras doesn’t recognize me at first. Not until I show her photos of herself does she smile. Backed against a shop facing a tight crowd of curious men, Nebras retreats shyly, studying her photo intently. I shoo back the men who had treated this beggar only as a nuisance and, kneeling before her, I ask the interpreter to tell her I had come from America to see her.
Without warning, the overwhelmed girl lunges forward and kisses me on the lips.
We buy her an ice cream from a passing vendor. She unwraps it and holds it out to me. My defenses melt. After two weeks of rigorous attention to all food and water that passed my lips, I lick the sweet streetfare sacrificing my intestines to this little girl’s pleasure at hosting a visitor with all she could offer.
She’s an only child who doesn’t know her age. It was particularly ironic that we had met outside the Al Mustanseria University, the world’s oldest science college, built in 1233. This schoolless girl’s only education is learned navigating the streets outside the university’s ancient walls.
I empty my purse of dinars, stuffing the oily bills into her plastic purse. She gleefully buys another ice cream for us to share.
Military helicopters zigzag overhead. Rumors that the American troops had closed bridges and jammed traffic make us jittery. Nebras escorts me out of the dicey souk, grabbing my hand and expertly keeping my skirt from being snagged by the ubiquitous wartime razor wire.
As we pass a store being repainted, she mentions it had been hit during the war’s initial attacks. She had spent the long nights of the early bombings in a nearby mosque.
I hug her harder than I intended. I feel her wiry hair against my cheek, her grungy T-shirt against my shoulder, her warm, open heart so willing to accept mine.
And then I’m gone.
Judge’s comments
There is clarity and lightness to the writing of this story -- a deft touch -- that never missteps into sentimentality. A good story should "show" rather than "tell", and this story succeeds. It captures the narrator's feelings towards the young girl with brevity and precision, colours in the story's setting equally so, and then snaps us with a perfect ending.
Kelly is the author of several award-winning articles. A recipient of five writing fellowships over three years, she has lived in writing colonies as far-flung as Bialystok, Poland. She is a popular college lecturer and accomplished public speaker and divides her time between Los Angeles, CA, and Ajijic, Mexico. She blogs at www.PeacePATHFoundation.org.
"Tongue Tied" is the first chapter of Kelly's forthcoming journalistic memoir about her experiences with Iraqi and Palestinian refugees. It originally appeared in Female Nomad and Friends: Tales of Breaking Free and Breaking Bread Around the World by Rita Golden Gelman with Maria Altobelli, published by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in June 2010. It was reprinted in The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011, edited by Lavinia Spalding, published by Travelers’ Tales, an imprint of Solas House, Inc.
Copyright for all pieces remains with the writers.
