Recently I entered the NYC Midnight Short Story contest. More than 6000 entrants competed in rounds against other writers until they crowned a top 10 many months later. I’ve entered the contest before, but this is the farthest I’ve made it in the competition. I was quite happy with the results making it to the penultimate round, but alas, the meritocracy has finally caught up with me; I’m out. The upshot is I can now publish the stories here.

A word about the format of the competition. Each round it quite strict and unique in its details so you can’t reuse stories. You are provided with a genre, a subject for the story, a character that must be included, a word limit, and a tight deadline. To this point, it is possible I might conceivably be able to punch these stories up a little if I exceed the word limit or ignore part of the prompt to take things in another direction. But seeing as the stories did quite well and it’s fun to show you what I came up with given the constraints, I’ve left everything as I submitted them to the competition. This is my round 1 entry.

Genre: Suspense
Subject: A debut
Character: An optimist
Word limit: 2000
Competition time: 4 days

“A beautiful day rarely lets itself be spoiled by trouble,” were the words posted on Paulo’s dive hut in Barranquilla. I walked the last two miles and finally I could see the tip of Baru. Now that I was beyond the lights of the resorts it was desolate, and I saw the two men in relief against the last light of the horizon.

“Hola!” I shouted with a swing of my arm. They waved me off with a sign to go back. “Buenos noches,” I called. They each raised the rifles under their arms halfway off the ground. “I’m the diver.”

Their rifles were still shouldered and they exchanged a glance. “Too early,” one of them managed in English.

“Well brother, I hitched most of the way here. You can’t complain about the speed of the wind.” I didn’t see any understanding in their faces, so I slowly reached into a loose pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes. I wondered if government men could smoke on the job in Colombia, but so far American cigarettes had been my passport. I offered one to each of them and lit a third for myself. I kept the last one for Paulo.

It was three hours before the boat pulled up and both men were still gripping their guns. A 30-foot yacht coasted silently toward the pier – not the standard steely matte grey you’d expect of government men, but painted pitch black with the hardtop cut off the cockpit so it was low and sleek to the water. I didn’t see Paulo until he came right up to the side of the boat and reached his arm out to help me down. A friend without a rifle was just the sort of friend I was looking for. “Hola, hombre!” I grinned and pulled him into a hug.

“This is General Cano,” Paulo told me with a motion. The man stepped deliberately towards me. Not hurried, but with a smile, like he had unexpectedly run into an old friend. He wore military fatigues with an olive field cap and greying cropped beard that would make Castro proud.

“So, this is the prized student,” he said, taking me in appraisingly. He nodded his head. “You were right Paulo,” he looks as talented as you said. “I have a good feeling about you. I have a good feeling about a great many things, but you especially.”

“Well I had a great teacher sir. To tell you the truth I was trading smokes for lessons at first. But it wasn’t long before he was taking me on for free.”

Paulo interjected, “Some time, you make special deal for so great student,” he tried in his best English.

“Paulo says I’m basically already AOWD. Once I get divemaster I can start teaching. Make a pretty penny anywhere in the world with that.”

The General put his hand around my shoulder with a grin. “After tonight, you’ll never need to worry about money again.” He called out something in Spanish to the man piloting the boat and, after the two rifleman climbed on, we were off. Only a few hundred feet from the pier and the wind was whipping across our faces. Even our sizable boat began to toss and pitch. An unseen crack of thunder peeled in the distance.

I pulled out the smoke and offered it to Paulo. He took it politely but declined my lighter when I offered.

“Normally we don’t smoke on the boat.” The General said as he pulled out a pack of matches and lit one. “On so dark a night, it is too easy to spot even this.” He lit Paulo’s cigarette. “But fortune often favours the righteous.” The General motioned and one of the two men with the rifles brought a bottle of brown liquor and small glasses. He poured and handed one to each of us. “Ready for your debut?” he asked. I could only trust that Paulo had prepared me for the mission. “Tonight, you become a brother in the struggle for what is right.”

I raised my glass, “Here’s to returning what is rightfully Colombia’s!” As I brought it to my mouth, the General caught me by the wrist.

“To the wealth of the Colombian people,” he corrected me. We took our drinks and I savoured the burn all the way down my throat. “Get ready,” he said.

Paulo popped open a case behind me with my dive equipment. With the pitch of the boat, I needed help into my wetsuit. “Quite a storm coming,” I said to no one in particular, slipping my legs into the tight rubber.

The general turned back to me. “This is no storm my boy. These are the kisses from the ocean.” A wave crashed into the side of the boat and sprayed across the deck.

“You really are a glass half full fellow, aren’t you?” I said.

“If someone offered me a half full glass, I would fill the rest myself. Why shouldn’t all our glasses be full?” He poured himself another drink right to the brim.

“How did you find the San Jose?” I couldn’t conceal my question any longer, and I thought the impertinence was warranted now that we were friends and brothers in the struggle.

“This is highly classified information, even you should not know this is your goal. But there are some in government who understand the struggle of the people.”

“But you’re with the government, obviously.” I looked across the pitch-black deck into the dark of the night, only a single resort was still visible, like a firefly far off in the distance.

He fixed me with a stare, “We are the heart of Colombia.”

I opened my mouth without a word ready. Paulo zipped my suit and pulled my hood tightly over my head. I offered my best easygoing grin and turned to my friend. “Paulo, why don’t you do these dives since you’re the divemaster?”

Paulo didn’t look at me. Instead, the General answered. “Our man Paulo is of a single talent. He is unrivaled in his ability to find gifted divers and pass onto them what he himself was not blessed with.” The two riflemen were tying a large yellow bag at the bow of the yacht. Paulo put my regulator in my mouth, and I pulled it back out.

“How deep is the ship?”

“After you have attached the bag,” the General said, “strike the line with metal so we will feel the vibration. Make sure you do not touch the line anywhere for one minute after you strike, or the vibration will not reach us. Then grab a hold tightly and we will pull you up.”

Paulo took me under the arm, walked me to the edge of the boat, and sat me on the edge of the railing. He affixed headgear to the top of my hood and switched on a headlamp.

“The conditions don’t seem as favourable as Paulo said we would need for this. I’m feeling a postponement might be…” I tried to stand up but was met with the General’s palm against my chest. The General fixed me with his stare again, but now his eyes were bleary and unblinking.

“Take some optimism from me my boy. You are here now and we are all friends together. No matter how it looks, let’s follow through on our commitments.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Even a worm will turn.” So far, the General had a remarkable grasp of English, but I could only hope that he had missed the idiom and had meant that the weather would surely turn around. I was offered no more time for contemplation. “Don’t let go of the cable on the way down,” he said, and kicked the yellow bag overboard.

With a crash it pulled me into the water. Just before I was pulled under, I took hold of the metal cable. I kept my hands on it faithfully as I was dragged down. Outside of the five feet of line I could see by my light, there was nothing but blackness. A deep, impenetrable blackness that would be no less suffocating if I had a thousand of these lights. I prayed the General had really forsworn the sharks from his ocean since I wouldn’t see a dozen sharks circling me until they had pulled off their choice piece of me and retreated back into the dark.

Only a few moments into the drop I saw my only predator, a cloud of scum was fixed around the cable like a wet strand of spaghetti hanging on a line. Only in the last moment did I see the tendrils of the jellyfish. By instinct I pushed against the line as hard as I could. I bent and contorted away from the gelatinous mass. It slid by my body as a narrowly missed limbo line. I tried to take a deep breath but was only offered the standard fare of the breathing regulator.

I was being pulled steadily down by the weight, but now I couldn’t see the line – my lifeline – anywhere. I tried to remember how I had turned and spasmed around the jellyfish, but it had been too chaotic. I turned back to my irreligious prayer. Please let me find the line. If I turned in a careful enough circle, surely my light would find it before I found the bottom. When I spotted it, I begged my arms and legs to shake their terror and drag me back.

Finally, cable in hand, I stopped. I turned my head around carefully and found to my great relief the bag had splayed across the ancient deck: the lost prize of the Spanish Armada. For a moment I felt sad. The beautiful ship was now covered in filth, sometimes green and sometimes grey, but never the brown of timber. And then I felt joy that half of my danger was over and that the treasure of the ship need not go to waste. If I ever saw another dawn I would do it as a rich man.

I released the bag, shook the weight from it and pushed towards an opening in the deck. As a nomadic globetrotter, I was pretty good with a map, and I found the ship laid out just as Paulo had shown me. From the stern of the ship, it shouldn’t be far to the captain’s quarters. I figured the hole I had squeezed through had brought me into something like a private officer’s galley. A huge metal pot told me I was right, and it was only a few more turns into the captain’s quarters and then the treasure room.

The room was smaller and more underwhelming than I had imagined. Paulo told me the score was worth billions of U.S. dollars, but with the hundreds of years of detritus spread over everything, I couldn’t picture how. I didn’t know exactly what to look for, but I had been told anything gold or silver or green.

I wiped away the build-up on what was obviously two treasure chests, neither of which opened with a pull. An easy enough problem for another day. I put the entire first chest into the yellow bag and dragged it back along my course with great effort. I finally attached it to the cable and headed back for the second chest.  

As I yanked the chest along by its handle, I felt myself running quickly out of energy, and I feared, oxygen. This would have to be my last trip. We could all put our faith in the mystery chests.

I pulled the load out on to the deck, my headlamp bumping along with every strain and jerk. I stopped dead and let the chest fall from my hands. I was afraid to steady the light on the sight I had glimpsed, and my hands began to tremble. I didn’t know if I had begun to hyperventilate or if my oxygen supply could only offer half breaths now, but I sucked hard. My light fell on the helm, down past the wheel of the ship, and to what was lodged underneath. A grotesque, bloated figure lay lifeless, clad in black. I prayed a third time that he was only covered in the grime that encased the rest of the ship. That I was looking only at a murky skeleton of centuries past. I moved a foot closer and saw his wetsuit was a twin of my own. His horrid flesh still clung to him, bulging in unrecognizable masses at the face and hand openings in his suit. The last friend of the General had found his grave here and I would too.

I tried to take a desperate breath and now knew for sure I was approaching the end of my oxygen. I grabbed hold of the chest again and darted for the line. With my last strength I lifted the treasure to my waist and tossed it in on the first chest. The impact snapped the lid of the first chest open and gold and silver pieces scattered. My oxygen was now taken in sips. I threw my legs around the yellow bag, took the regulator out of my mouth and struck it against the cord.

Without hesitation the bag line pulled taut and dragged me towards the surface. I was ascending five times faster than I had going down. I reached down and took a handful of coins and emeralds. Pulling my suit away at the neck I stuffed them down against my chest. I knew I had less than a minute to come up with a plan before I had to face the General and his plan that I obviously didn’t factor into.

I decided if I let go too early I was more apt to die from drowning than being shot, but I held out hope for some middle ground. A plan, any plan. I would wait until I saw the surface show any sign of getting lighter, then count to five and let go. Surely my suit was dark enough that they couldn’t find me in the open water.

There it was. Light. One Mississippi. And then the jellyfish. I was enveloped like an egg yolk, the stinging tendrils easily prodding through my suit. The sensation was fire and lighting. My back arched and my muscles seized. I floated away from the cable, and my regulator from my mouth.

I had a final sober conversation with myself. Would I rather my lungs explode in my chest, or open my mouth and let the water in? I found no answer, but learned that even a body in anguish, even with only a moment to live, nonetheless had some absolute will to survive. Then I broke the surface of the water.

As the sun touched the horizon, I thought this sure was a lot of trouble for a beautiful day.