And the short story winner is...New Normal by Leonard Diepeveen!

DarkWinter Lit is thrilled to announce that New Normal  by Leonard Diepeveen was chosen during blind judging as the winning entry in our 4th Anniversary Short Story Contest by judge Rod Carley! Thanks to all who entered our 4th Anniversary Short Story contest this year--we had more submissions than ever, and it was an extremely talented field!

Congratulations also to Kim Cubitt, our second-place winner for the story Teacher's Pet, and our third place winner Pamela McHugh for the story Snatched !

You can read Leonard Diepeveen's wonderfully timely and cleverly satirical story below, and the rest of the shortlist and longlist will be featured on our special Shortlist/Longlist Saturdays feature, beginning next week! Congratulations again to Leonard Diepeveen! And a huge thanks to Rod Carley for doing such an excellent job!

New Normal by Leonard Diepeveen

It looked to be another lazy Saturday morning. Mark had come downstairs for breakfast in his robe, given his usual glance out the living room window to see what the neighbors were up to, and to check on the weather in the outside world. It was sunny, but it was hard to tell which way the wind was blowing. That seemed a little odd, what with all the trees in his front yard, but he pushed it aside, headed for the kitchen, and set to work. He ground the beans for his coffee, tipped them into the machine’s basket, added water and pressed a button. While he waited for his coffee, he made himself a bit of a parfait, which he would save as a kind of dessert: yoghurt, some blueberries, and a little granola sprinkled on top. And a bit of maple syrup. Why not? When his coffee was ready, he slid a couple of waffles into the toaster, waited a couple of minutes for the pop, and then sat down to a good breakfast, something he could linger over while he read the news.

He began scrolling through his news feed. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to read this morning, for news, and which source to turn to first. He usually let the algorithm decide; it was just easier that way. Decisions could be hard, first thing in the morning. But this morning, feeling a little restless, he resisted. He wanted a look at something different. Maybe the Guardian? Al Jazeera? These hadn’t shown up on his news feed for some months now. He used to look at them regularly, but they had gradually slipped to the bottom of his feed and then disappeared altogether. So, instead of clicking on the first link to today’s top stories, the link that the algorithm provided, he thought he would try something new, and typed in “Al Jazeera.” Why not.

A hand reached out from the screen and smacked him across the face.

Strange, he thought. But these are unprecedented times. It probably had something to do with the algorithm. He shrugged. He wasn’t that super-interested in Al Jazeera anyway. There were plenty of other news sources in his feed, all pointing in the same direction. Weird word, “feed,” he thought. Made him feel a bit like a cow. He clicked on the first link.

The latest news out of Michigan wasn’t encouraging—fighting in Dearborn again. You could kind of expect tension there, what with Dearborn’s Muslim population and the local militias. Poor people. He took a bite of a waffle and checked a few other sources, to get their take. They all said this kind of thing was the new normal now. Hmm. He shrugged. As he did so he felt something slip—his nose had begun to slide down his face, just a bit. It had been doing that lately. He absentmindedly pushed it back up, but this morning it wouldn’t stay in place. While he continued reading, he pushed at it, off and on, and then, irritated, decided to just pull it off his face and be done with it. He set his nose down on a coaster next to his coffee and figured he would deal with it later. The coffee was really good this morning. Excellent, in fact. Must be the new beans.

After a few minutes an ear fell onto the table in front of him. He stared at it, his attention momentarily pulled away from the news about Dearborn. It looked like one of his ears—the left, he realized, after a pause. Probably got dislodged with that slap, he figured. He picked it up and, while absent-mindedly fingering its familiar cartilaginous ridges and rubbery texture, he leaned forward and scrolled to a new story, about the recent UN resolution on Gaza. Netanyahu’s going to be pissed, that’s for sure. But it won’t change much.

Mark read on, so engrossed that he found himself picking up one of his waffles with his right hand and taking a few absent-minded bites. He paused mid-chew. Wow. It seemed like the American President’s latest executive order—to dismantle all solar farms because of how they could send out weird messages to possible invading armies—was getting some opposition. The New York Times was running two op-eds, representing the two viewpoints on this. Smart, he thought, and reached for his coffee. The coffee really was exceptional today. He would need to remember his grind setting and where he got those beans—not Whole Foods, he knew that, but some place a little farther out. In that little strip mall, next to the Wendy’s. The drive would be worth it. As he shifted position and put his cup down he felt his left arm let go, falling with a clunk to the floor, where it trembled a little, and then came to a stop. He stared. This wasn’t good—it had fallen just out of reach, and he didn’t want to have to get up again. He had just gotten settled, and it had been a long week. “Could somebody please get that, please?”, he asked, without looking up. But in the ensuing silence he realized his wife was gone for the weekend, attending that self-defence course she was so enamored of. Well, he could take care of the arm later. It wasn’t going anywhere. But he’d have to remember. His wife had said she was done cleaning up after him. He put the coffee where it was in easy reach of his right hand and scrolled down to Sports. The Knicks were playing the Lakers tonight. That used to mean something. Unprecedented times indeed.

No use reading about that. He scrolled back up to the top of the page. US Department of Justice in the news again, this time over immigration, not Epstein. They were expanding the deportations, this time to Guatemala. Not just illegals, but also refugees, regular immigrants, and a few naturalized citizens. As he read David Brooks’s take on it—always interesting—he felt a slight tingling, which he ignored for a while. But as it kept on he eventually looked down to see what was going on, and saw that his right leg was on fire—not a lot, but still. Just to be safe, with a slight tug he pulled it off and, leaning over, set it against the wall by the open window, where it smoldered and twitched a bit. It probably wouldn’t set off the alarm where it was, and, since the leg hairs had burned themselves out, the worst was over. Curious, he thought. You’d think there would be more pain. But to be honest, he hadn’t felt anything much for a while now. He wasn’t exactly sure when that had started.

Feeling the weight of the news settle on him, he decided, as he usually did at some point, to check out his social media. He knew he was just dicking around, but come on. You still had to live your life. That’s what the editorials were increasingly saying. Self care. He took another bite of his waffle. He couldn’t find many of his friends on Facebook anymore. Most had just slowly disappeared, either because they had stopped posting—whether from boredom or whether they were pissed at Zuckerberg— or because the algorithm had swept them into a corner somewhere. Whatever it was algorithms did. In any case, on all his social media his friends had for the most part been gradually replaced by things the algorithm thought he would be interested in. On Instagram today his attention was being directed to people walking on wobbly bridges and falling into water. Lots of people and many videos, all kind of the same, as was the algorithmic way. He wondered what people falling off of bridges said about him and what he was likely to buy. After his fifth video Mark noticed that, with the leg gone, he felt a bit of a breeze under his robe. No surprise there, really—he had gone commando this morning, discarding his boxer shorts until after his shower since he was the only one home. “They hate us for our freedoms,” he murmured to himself. He tucked in his robe, but as he did so he heard a few small bounces. Looking down, he saw his testicles making for the door. His penis waddled after them, as if it were trying to catch up. This is all starting to feel a little metaphorical, Mark thought. The idea disturbed him. Metaphors in real life were impossible, weren’t they? Didn’t they happen only when one thing represented something else, like saying life is a highway? Or was that synecdoche? He couldn’t decide, especially it being so early in the day. Anyway, he thought, there is nothing to represent here, no need to start thinking about what it means. That is just my penis going out the door, that’s all.

He turned to his second toaster waffle. What with the coffee and a bit of yoghurt with blueberries, a good start to the day. It was a kind of self-care, wasn’t it? That and his daily Wordle. He turned to it, a satisfying ritual every day. Maybe he could get it in three tries today. Yesterday’s was really hard. He shook his head in disappointment at how poorly he had done—six turns!—and as he did so his right eyebrow and part of his forehead let loose and slipped onto his yoghurt parfait. Well that isn’t good, he thought. I was looking forward to ending with that. But it turned out to be a small problem, all things considered. He found if he just pushed his eyebrow to the side there was still a lot of good yoghurt left, if his lips held out.

The doorbell rang. Craning his neck, Mark couldn’t quite see who it was, and, trying to stand, found he couldn’t get up to answer. Right, he thought, that one leg was on fire, and I just tossed it across the room. That was a lack of foresight, for sure. Damn. I sure could use it now. Maybe it could be salvaged, with a bit of work. He’d have to see. The ringing continued, oddly insistent. Probably the outside world calling again, he figured. Mark thought he would pretend he wasn’t home—no need to disturb the peace of the morning. He scooted his chair a bit to the side, out of sight of the outside world, and as he did so he felt the bottom half of his face pull away and slither to the ground. He stared at it. “I guess this is the new normal,” his mouth said up at him from the floor. He eyed it skeptically and turned back to his Wordle.