Carol's Writing Contest #1: Mad Cow, Mad Heifers From Hell. We All Know One. Give Us the Dirt. $20+ SBD

~ Minimum $20 SBD prize pool ~

ONE BY ONE, THE COWS STEAL MY SANITY

She is the soul of kindness, with a heart as big as her backside, which is parked in a chair at a desk outside the door of someone with a brass nameplate she covets but will never have.

No matter. This woman wields power in (supposedly) "a man's world." This is not to say she is the boss, your boss, or "a" boss. More likely, she's holding a peon position. Rigidly. With a Doberman snarl concealed by a syrupy smile.

In truth, our workaday world is ruled by bossy, mean, petty women who pose as sweet, smiling, "go-to" ladies. They are fixtures here. "Here" can be a company, a school, church, hospital, non-profit, anywhere you spend your time, and do your best, only to have some old heifer chastise you. And get you fired. From an unpaid volunteer job, even, if she feels threatened by your competence and your youthful energy and ambition.

Her job is secure. She is a fixture, all right, in every sense of the word. Just try to dislodge this beached whale from her post. Even the boss may come to hate her, but he cannot fire her, either.

WE ALL KNOW THIS WOMAN

The mean boss has had his day in cartoons and sitcoms. This is about the woman in a position of apparently no power who secretly wears the pants (so to say).

Here is your chance to vent. Get it out in the guise of fiction. Play with it, if you wish, and get even, if only in your imagination. Or just describe her to us and share an example of her assorted atrocities.

HINT:

The Rhino prefers insight and humor, not wrath and bitterness. You could even have your heifer from hell morph into a sympathetic character. It's more than ok if she goes the way of that town snitch in "The Waking of Ned Devine*," as long as you make me laugh, and hate myself for laughing.

*(If you haven't seen that movie. GO. Watch it asap!)

RULES AND TIPS

Deadline to Submit: Sunday, August 26, midnight CST, but I am not a heifer. A certain amount of wiggle room, slack cutting, and leeway is my m.o.

Word Limit: Just cut to the chase. Too many words, and you don't win the prize. If you're good at telling stories, 500 words or less ought to suffice.

THE PRIZE: a minimum $20 SBD

Should the post earn more than $25 in sbd, all remainders will be transferred to @SFT.

Steemhouse Fiction Trail has one goal: to curate the very best creative writing on Steemit. Novels, short stories, flash fiction--we are on the hunt.

In the 1830s, heifer, pronounced "HEFF-er," was first used as slang for "woman" or "girl." By the 1960s, farmers like my dad used the term for bossy old ladies. Heifers are cows who have not yet given birth to a calf, so “old heifer” is usually an oxymoron, while “that old cow” is more logical.

NO COMMENT on etymology or plausibility of idioms like this: “If Mom finds out, she’ll have a cow.”

DISCLAIMER: I was born on a farm with a small dairy herd. Cows are fascinating creatures and deserve way more respect. This is a topic for another day. Meanwhile, my dad’s irreverence (old heifer, mad cow) and male chauvinistic piggishness aside, this is the time and place for us to vent about that woman who makes your job miserable.

I am not - not - one of these human Heifers from Hell.

JUDGING:

I will pick the winner, along with the esteemed and legendary @rhondak, whose praises I cannot sing often enough or audibly enough, especially when she's editing this.

Post a link to your entry in the comment box. Readers who praise your story may be able to sway us, if we're torn between several entries.

All images courtesy of Pixabay