Some great news!
Turns out David Edelman (Infoquake) selected one of my entries as a winner in the “Opening lines of a Jewish Marxist Werewolves of Bolivia novel” contest, which I found incredibly cool of him to do.
Click here for his post on the contest results
Here’s my entry that Dave picked:
And the rabbi was lying on a mountain of ash and stones
with a ravenous mouth and staring pupils,
and in his soul there was silence and darkness and nothing more.
—an excerpt from Der Volf, by H. Leivick
“As I adjust my tallit, the wolf yowls within me and peers through my eyes at an infant in its mother’s arms, as she sits in the recesses of the synagogue. A crunchy morsel, juicy on the outside, crunchy on the inside.
I curse the demon to silence. It’s just before sundown on Yom Kippur, and I must recite the Kol Nidre and escape before I slaughter everyone gathered for the evening prayers.
The wolf snarls and paces the cage of my ribs, gnawing them one at a time. Sometimes I wonder if wolves, rather than humans, were made in God’s image. Certainly we’re no better than beasts as we have turned on each other here in La Paz—gorging on the weaker, and then submitting to the stronger as they clamp their jaws around our hairy throats.”
Congratulations also to Colin Fisk, who got second (and a signed copy of Infoquake as well) and the honorable mentions of Edward Finch and Norman Levinson. To read their contributions, check out the link pasted above. Here also is the second entry I shot in, which doesn’t really mention “Bolivia”:
Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. In the morning he devours the prey, and in the evening he divides the spoils.
—Jacob’s prophecy concerning his sons, the twelve tribes of Israel, as found in Genesis 49:27
“Some Kabbalah mystics say the Lord made man from his own flesh. So, when I eat the flesh of man, I feel closer to the Lord than at any other time. To me, God is the moon, and my howls become the only worship He hears.
That, and nowhere does it say that human flesh isn’t kosher. Blood, sure, but I’m a delicate eater. Years of bleeding the coffers of foreign creditors dry have given me quite the talent for separating blood from flesh.”
As Dave mentions, most of us who entered this contest are probably a few months shy on taking our medication.
I see that smile.