Taking It To The Mats

More than twenty years ago, Big Anklevich challenged me to write a story based on his premise, which was the first Broken Mirror Story Event.  If you recall, I finished my story, "Monitored Conversation," around a year before he finished his own story, "The Baby Dies - What, Does That Surprise You?"

And that's been the status quo for pretty much all these years (though never with that long a gap in between*).  But not anymore.  No, the sock is on the other glove now, kids, because Big continues to write like crazy, maintaining a steady workman's pace, while I can only manage to fart and watch YouTube with a similar frequency.

A couple of weeks ago, I told him it was time for us to start thinking of another writing contest, something we could do across both our podcasts.  He, disgusted as usual by my suggestion, asked what I meant.  I said, "Oh, something like, Write a story about evil or haunted floormats**, that sort of thing."

The mats on my car look like they've been driven over and dragged a country mile, then put back in my vehicle using a pitchfork, and I keep meaning to replace them, but I'm way too cheap.  A couple of times lately, I've thought they might be cursed and it's high-time to burn them in the backyard, like I'm from West Virginia and it's a class textbook by a woman author.  

And I thought, as I do every week, there's got to be a story in that somewhere.

I wish my mats looked this good.

Well, to my surprise, Big said, "Challenge accepted," and commenced work on it before the suggestion was even out of my mouth.  And not only has he finished his, but it's over twelve thousand words long (the crazy bastage even considered running it in the next episodes of his podcast).

Meanwhile, my story isn't even half that length, is far from finished, and for the third time in a row, just not very good.  Hmmm.

Well done, Anklevich.  Truly, the student had eclipsed the teacher, and has been sleeping with the teacher's wife. 

*Technically, this is not true, as he wrote a story about working at Little Caesar's Pizza after challenging me to do the same, and his was done a couple of years before mine (Big claims that his was written more than a full decade before mine, but I assure you, he is lying).  But that wasn't technically a Broken Mirror Story Event, since we had just said, "We both worked at Little Caesar's?  We ought to write a story about that."

**I realize that "floor mats" is supposed to be two words, but enough is enough--English is constantly shifting anyway.