The tragic tale of the old man and the river.

Liz brought to my attention a short story contest that's going on soon. Mayhaps I'll enter it. I've never entered a writing competition before, but it might give me that motivation that has been lacking of late. I've only got one story, and thanks to a shitty fucking ass-bitch of a disk, it was corrupted and deleted. One of those situations where you can't access the information on the disk because it's corrupt and the only way to make it uncorrupt (legitimate?) again is to reformat, effectively erasing all the contents of said shitty fucking ass-bitch of a disk. Perhaps this is what I need to re-write it.

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The story is about an old man who lives next to a river. He lives in a not uncomfortable house, and sleeps in a not uncomfortable bed. He farms in a field every day, and every day he runs his plow into a rock that he's sure he removed the day before. Across the river is another house which appears to be tended, but no one lives there. There is fresh laundry hanging on the line, the house is not in need of painting, the fields look less rocky. But the old man is afraid of the river, which has white water and is running very rapidly. He resolves to stay in his decaying house. It's not SO bad after all.

One day he wakes up and there's a spider hanging over his bed. Being deathly afraid of spiders, he cannot bring himself to sleep in the room anymore, and sleeps on the chair in his living room instead. After a few nights of this his back gets sore and he has trouble plowing the fields. He can no longer move the rocks out of the way, and they seem to be getting bigger and bigger each day. Spring comes and the river floods its banks and finds its way into the old man's living room. He finally decides that he must gather his belongings and cross the river if he is to go on living. He puts his things in a bag which he slings onto his back and begins to timidly cross the river. It is not long before he realizes that the river does not run any deeper than his knees, and though it runs swiftly he has no trouble finding a footing. He crosses the river with no incident.

When he reaches the other side, he inspects the house. There is indeed no one living there, but now that he is up close he sees that the paint is beginning to peel. It does not need painting right away, but it will in a years time. The fresh laundry on the line is indeed nicer than his old scratchy blanket, but it is beginning to fray around the edges. The fields still have rocks in them, but they are much smaller. The old man looks back at his flooded house and feels grateful. The new house is not everything that he dreamed it would be, but it is indeed an improvement. He also feels foolish. Had he crossed the seemingly dangerous river sooner, he would not have had to sleep in his living room and hurt his back. He would not have had to deal with the seemingly endless supply of rocks in his old field. He would not have been itchy in the mornings.

Looking away from his old house, he sees that on the other side of his new house is a glen of trees. It is dark, dank, and shadowy and the old man is convinced that he sees eyes peering out at him. On top of a small hill in the middle of the glen is a cottage. From what the old man sees, the paint is not chipped at all, there is a garden with food growing in it, and a brand new set of cotton sheets are hanging on the line. The old man looks at his new house, then looks at the cottage, then the glen. He knows he has a decision to make.
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The contest costs $15 to enter, and if you win, you get $300 and your work published. I think I could deal with that. Yeah, I'll give it a shot.