Writer’s Digest 92nd Annual Competition Winning Mainstream/Literary Short Story: “Debinar”
Congratulations to Adam Peltzman, grand-prize winner of the 92nd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition.
Adam Peltzman is a writer who enjoys working in a variety of forms. For television, he’s written, created, and produced numerous popular series for kids (both live-action and animation). He also co-created and produced a fictional comedy podcast series for kids and families. For the stage, Adam has written touring adaptations of television shows, plus several short comedic plays that have been produced in theaters throughout the U.S. And his short fiction is just now starting to find its way off of his laptop and into the world. Adam lives in Montclair, N.J., with his wife, daughter, and dog. He’s also sort of obsessed with pickleball.
Here’s his winning mainstream/literary short story, “Debinar.”
Debinar
by Adam Peltzman
Deb propped her phone up against a mug on her desk and opened the video camera. Her face filled the frame so she pushed the mug back and tried a few openers:
“Hi, this is Deb.”
“Hey, Deb here.”
“I’m Deb. Hello!”
“Hey, it’s Deb.”
Deb wrote “Hey, it’s Deb” on a sticky note. It felt the most natural. “It’s key to have a signature greeting,” she said to her cat, Wilhelm, who appeared indifferent.
But Deb still hadn’t chosen a topic. Yesterday she had narrowed it down to four. This morning Deb wrote in her journal, “Once I choose, it’s off to the races.” Maybe that’s why she was stalling. She grabbed a notebook off the desk and studied a handwritten list:
THINGS I KNOW ABOUT
Walking
Air frying
Abdominal breathing exercises
Flush mount lighting sconces
As she read the list, “Air Frying” jumped out. “Okay,” she thought. “Just go.” She pressed the record button.
“Hey, it’s me, Deb,” she said. “Today I want to talk about making that perfect air fryer dinner for one.” Deb stopped the recording. She walked four steps to her kitchen and grabbed the air fryer from the counter. She brought it back to her desk and hit the button again, announcing that having a compact air fryer was a good first step, and hers, at two-quart capacity, was an excellent space saver. She described a recipe for breaded chicken tenders and included a little “hack” for adding store-bought frozen crinkle fries while the chicken was still finishing. She stopped the video but then started recording again because she had forgotten to say: “That’s all for now. If you have an idea for a future Debinar, put it in the comments.”
Deb watched the video back. She noticed she kept looking past the camera and scratching her arm and saying, “um.” She couldn’t help comparing herself to Netty Schmidt, always so poised in her clothes-folding videos. In over three hundred videos, Deb had never seen Netty scratch her arm. Netty’s arms were as were perfectly smooth as the tee shirts she folded, her chin so still when she looked into the camera and smiled so easily and said, “Let’s fold again soon.” But then there was episode 132 – Learnings from the Drawer – where Netty interviewed herself and said that the seventh most important lesson she had learned was: you have to start somewhere.
Deb held her finger over the “post video” button for two minutes. Her knuckle started to cramp. She thought if she had to stop to stretch her knuckle she might never get the courage up. She pressed the button.
Deb walked across the room to pull another notebook out from under her bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and wrote:
“3/19, later. Today I launched Debinar. Felt a lot of chest tightness and that same throat closing thing but I went ahead with it and feel like I can swallow again.”
Ping!
Calendar alert. Five minutes until work. Deb put the notebook back, stood, took a step and was at the kitchen, boiling water in the smallest budget tea kettle she had been able to find online. She pressed her fingers two inches below her navel and said out loud her intention for the workday: “Listen to the customers as if they are old and dear friends.”
She went to the desk and moved her chair from the long side facing the wall to the short side facing the bed. She had read that creating a separate space for work can really make it feel like you are going to work.
“I’m sorry to hear that your exterior flush mount wall sconce is not fitting properly,” Deb said to a woman named Greta from Dayton, Ohio. “What is the height of the shingle you’re trying to attach it to?” As Greta spoke Deb’s finger drifted to her phone and opened her video online. She dragged it down for a refresh: zero views.
“It sounds like the Carson might be too tall for that shingle,” Deb said. “I can go ahead and get you set up with a return label.” Deb thought she was being too robotic. She put her fingers back under her navel and breathed: “Greta, I know the process of finding the right lights can frustrating, huh?” There was a pause and Greta replied, “It’s fine.”
On her lunch break Deb put Wilhelm under her arm and walked to the little grocery on the corner. There had been a mixup on the rescue site where she found Wilhelm, she thought she was getting a dog. But when she met him she had already signed some of the key papers. Deb and Wilhelm had an unspoken agreement: he’d go for walks, but no leash.
At the store, just as Deb grabbed the boxed turkey sandwich from the refrigerated shelf her phone pinged. Then again. Then again. Danman4741 liked her video. Danman4741 commented on her video: “Cool.” Danman4741 subscribed to her videos. Deb’s heart raced.
Back home, Deb dragged her desk chair to her lunch area, next to the sink. She refreshed the video. Still one view, one like, one comment. She clicked on Damnman4741’s profile and saw that he had posted one video in April of 2019, which had 38 views. In it, a man with shaggy gray hair and a sleeveless tee shirt – presumably Danman4741 – stood in a dusty garage and replaced the pull cord of a Black + Decker weed trimmer. There were two comments: “Thanks” and, “This did not work for me.” Deb paused the video and used her fingertip to rub Danman’s upper arm. She clicked like, then subscribe, then share. Then she typed a comment: “This was just what I needed.”
Deb went to her bed and wrote in her notebook: “1:29pm. I may be developing feelings for Danman4741.”
Ping!
Back to work. Eliot from Montpellier was having the darnedest time getting his front hall fixture to look right, and Deb helped him realize that he had installed it upside down. Eliot was grateful and Deb encouraged him to stay on the line for a brief customer satisfaction survey.
Ping!
Danman4741 posted a video. It showed Danman4741 air-frying a ribeye steak using the same technique Deb used with the chicken tenders. Danman’s kitchen looked bigger and much shinier than Deb had expected. Danman’s air fryer was the size of a conga drum, but dented on one side. At the end of the video he thanked Debinar23 for the great technique, and said that if you don’t have a compact unit, try using foil to create a smaller basket.
There was a moment at the end where Danman was done speaking but he didn’t stop the video. Deb could hear Danman swallow and breathe, he looked down at his hands, then back up at the camera. Deb froze the video and rubbed Danman4741’s hair with her fingertip. It was whiter than in the video from 2019, but cut tighter to his head. Deb saw a reflection in Dan’s kitchen window that she thought looked like a ghost.
Ping! Ping! Ping! Two new likes on Deb’s video from other users and one comment: “Nice. Will try.” Deb said to Wilhelm: “I need a weed trimmer, and fast.”
Deb walked along Fourth Avenue with Wilhelm under her arm. With her free hand she sent a message to Shane, her manager, saying that she felt lightheaded and needed to lie down for maybe one hour, or maybe three. At Target a young clerk, also named Shane, helped Deb find an inexpensive weed trimmer and a small toolkit. Deb’s credit card was declined but she had brought a backup envelope of small bills and dimes and was able to cover the tools and a small bag of treats for Wilhelm.
At home she leaned her phone up against a dictionary on the floor and pressed the red button. “Hey, it’s me, Deb,” she said. “Today I’ll be replacing a cord on an Earthwise 18-Volt cordless weed trimmer, with help from Danman4741. And then we’re going to put it to the test!” With Danman’s video on her laptop to guide her, Deb moved through the steps with great focus, mostly in a squatted position which made her ankles scream.
Deb pulled the spark plug boot off the spark plug. She removed screws from the starter pulley. She pulled out the pulley housing, managed to cut the cord with a dull kitchen knife, and extracted the knot from the pull handle with needle nose pliers. She removed the center screw and the starter hub.
It was then that Deb realized her error. She had no replacement cord. She wouldn’t even know where to get one. Her video was a fraud. She remembered Netty Schmidt’s ninth lesson from “Learnings from the Drawer”: the camera knows when you are not being you.
Deb paused the recording, lied on her bed and wrote in her journal:
“Sometimes I make the worst choices.”
Deb put her fingers below her navel. She felt the rise and fall of her abdomen. Her clock said 4:17. It would soon be time to feed Wilhelm and boil spaghetti. Her stomach rose and fell, rose and fell. 4:37. 5:07.
Ping!
It was Shane, asking if Deb would be well enough to work tomorrow. Deb sat up in the bed, saw the parts scattered on the floor. She opened her camera, aimed it at her face and pressed the button.
“Hi everybody. I’m going to replace the cord with the same cord. This is because it’s a brand new weed trimmer. I bought it just now. I also don’t have any weeds to trim but I will do my best to find something trim-able. I’m sorry if anybody feels misled, especially Danman4741.”
Deb finished assembling the weed trimmer, starting with lifting the old recoil pulley out of the assembly, and finishing with feeding the new (same) cord through the assembly hole and replacing the spark plug boot. She lugged the unit down three flights of stairs and out onto Fourth Avenue. She leaned her phone up against a trashcan on the corner and started recording. She pulled the cord on the weed trimmer and it whirred to life. Deb smiled to camera: “Listen to that hum.” She looked around for something green and saw some leaves growing out of the brick on the side of her building. Deb was in a fencing club in high school and she used a basic lunge gesture, but slower, to swipe the head of the trimmer against the leaves. Deb obliterated the leaves, green confetti bursting into the air. She kept pushing, and the head of the trimmer hit brick. The trimmer stuttered and barked and jolted Deb backward. She fell onto the sidewalk. A skinny and judgmental man with an iced coffee stepped over her legs. Deb looked over her shoulder at the camera leaning up agains the trash can: “That’s all for now,” she said. “If you have an idea for a future Debinar, put it in the comments.”
Later, Deb ate spaghetti with reheated chicken tenders and scanned through three comments: “Love your commitment,” “I was worried when you fell LOL,” and, “This did not work for me.” But nothing from Danman4147.
Deb lied in her bed and watched Netty Schmidt’s latest: Getting Khakis into Tight Spaces. Wilhelm had already turned in, curled up on his cat bed. A siren and a loud car stereo outside her window made it hard to focus.
Ping!
Danman4147 posted a new video. It showed Danman using a wooden grill skewer to clean between the grates of his air fryer basket. Danman’s forearm muscles twitched as he worked to dislodge a fleck of burnt beef. Then a hand reached in to give Dan a wet, soapy cloth. Danman reached for the camera and said, “Nice to get a little help from the Missus.” Danman swooped the camera toward a woman holding a rag and a package of wooden grill skewers. Deb paused the video to get a good look at the Missus. Her arms were thin, her head seemed recently shaved, little stubs of gray poking out over the scalp. She looked tired but smiled radiantly at Danman. Deb unpaused the video. Danman reoriented the camera toward himself, smiling.
Deb shut the video and shut her light and laid back on her bed. The siren had stopped but the bass thumps continued, though further off. Wilhelm snored faintly, as Deb closed her eyes and felt her hand on her stomach, rising and falling, faint images of tightly folded khakis flitting across her mind.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
Deb reached for her phone. Danman4741 liked your video. Danman4741 commented on your video: “Glad you’re okay.” Danman4741 commented on your video: “This was just what I needed.”