Jolanta Polk

“PANDORA'S BOX” by Jolanta Polk

Submitted to Contest #244

I cry so rarely that I sometimes suspect I lack proper lachrymal ducts. Because no matter how miserable I feel, how low my heart sinks, or how far I am knocked sideways, I barely shed a tear. I didn’t cry when my dad was killed in a car accident when I was eight. Or when Matt, my husband of ten years, decided to leave with Alice, his best friend’s wife.But now I realize there is nothing physically wrong with me, and I learned restraint from my grandmother, Anneliese, because crying is not for survivors like us.“Carrying emotions on the sleev...

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“Amber Alert” by Jolanta Polk

Submitted to Contest #242

Two days before Christmas, Roman Kopman, a 48-year-old anthropologist, woke up at seven a.m. like he had done for the past twenty-five years. Just as he was about to shrug out of his boxer shorts on his way to the bathroom, his attention was captured by the voice of a newsreader. "We have an intriguing update on the cigar-shaped interstellar object known as Oumuamua. It seems that this celestial visitor, which made its way into our solar system in mid-December, is showing signs of acceleration. Oumuamua, which reaches speeds of up to 54...

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“ONCE UPON A TIME IN LABARCA” by Jolanta Polk

Submitted to Contest #233

Labarca had never been more than a one-lane hamlet with three dozen houses slouching like dozing hens in a coop. The valley cradling the village was surrounded by hills overgrown by ferns, imported Oregon pines, Australian eucalyptuses, and native espinos—low, prickly bushes speckled with duck-yellow flowers that stole threads from trespassers’ clothing. The place smelled of oblivion, and the winding roads leading there were so little used that thistles, nettles, and dandelion sprouted between the ruts....

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“As I Grow Old, I Remember” by Jolanta Polk

1.     My very first memory - I was three or four.  My mother's girandole earrings (I later learned it was pronounced "jeer-an-dou-lee"), with three green stones dangling at the bottom, the centerpiece slightly lower than the other two. Not Swarovski, but Jablonex, mass-produced behind the Iron Curtain in the neighboring Czech Republic. All year round, Mom kept them locked in a box wrapped in a h...

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“Bon Appetit” by Jolanta Polk

Submitted to Contest #228

Death, crime, The black limousine with tinted windows and custom-made license plates pulled up in front of “L’hippocampe d’argent” in the heart of Paris. Its passenger, Jean Luc Toussaint, an overweight man with unusually short legs, wobbled out onto the ice-covered street, fighting for breath like a trout caught in a net. The fairy lights on the Christmas tree outside the restaurant's entrance ...

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“A not-so-run-of-the-mill hero ” by Jolanta Polk

Submitted to Contest #224

At 7 p.m. on the dot, Herbert Brown, age thirty-eight, a surveillance officer at NoIntrusion Inc., opens the door to the control room and settles down for the night shift. Although the title sounds imposing, Hebert will only press buttons, watch fifty monitors, and try to stay awake for the next twelve hours. Because, frankly, the job is mind-numbing.  Since he started three months ago, no woul...

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“THE MIGHTY HOPES THAT MAKE US MEN” by Jolanta Polk

Submitted to Contest #223

I enter the rehearsal room, sensing something meaningful will happen to me today, and immediately spot her vixen face, green eyes, and corn-colored hair. She has a unique look about her. Maybe it's the way she nibbles on her bottom lip when she smiles. She is new to the band and must have joined while I was in Nicaragua last month. For the first time in eighteen years... When I see her surname on the list...

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“THE WRITING CLASS” by Jolanta Polk

Submitted to Contest #222

There were three of us in the little cafe squeezed between a dime store and a launderette in Little Italy. We had the place to ourselves; it was too late for the night-time boozers who dropped in to hose down their stomachs irritated by the excessive intake of Manhattans and too early for the mid-day pastrami-on-rye guzzlers from nearby offices. If anybody wondered why a would-be writer, born, bred, and baptized in the ...

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“BIRDS OF PARADISE” by Jolanta Polk

Submitted to Contest #218

The unusual sound came from the toolshed just as dusk began to blur Bilburry Hall's contours. Something resembling wings flapping against bushes or dozens of creatures attempting to flee the constraints of the wooden structure. Even though it was more of a feeling than an actual noise, Tom Davies, the gardener, couldn't resist investigating further. He approached the structure with caution, his heart beating with apprehension.Of late, he noticed strange things happening in the garden. Things that...

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“THE WOMAN FROM A BOTERO PAINTING” by Jolanta Polk

The Woman from a Botero Painting  Harriet headed to the seventh floor as soon as she entered the building. The class was in full swing, with three couples dancing, exuding sensuality, and divining each other’s every move. At the other end of the room, she spotted a group of men standing beside a slim woman in a dress split on one side right up to the hip. Harriet thought it was ...

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“REGENERATOR” by Jolanta Polk

Submitted to Contest #215

REGENERATOR She was starving. At least, that’s what the human who fed called this gnawing feeling in her gut. She could hear the intense grumbling in her stomach as hunger writhed inside her like a viper. Her salivary glands, triggered by the thought of food, squirted gallons of a viscous liquid, not unlike burnt gasoline, straight into her gullet. It was pure fire. She couldn't remembe...

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