"Hypnotized" by Elizaveta Zanozina, a "Mayonnaise" contest winner


My Creative Writing Contest "Mayonnaise" has come to its inevitable end, which is good because I can finally share the amazing stories by the amazing winners! The prompt for the contest was simple: Write a story that ends with the word "Mayonnaise." I am beyond thrilled to present one of the winners Elizaveta Zanozina and share her story "Hypnotized." See her interpretation of the prompt and enjoy her story!

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Hypnotized

I stood there watching him pour down mayonnaise into a salad bowl. He didn't just squeeze the pack, dropping unshaped mass of yellowish something onto the chopped vegetables. Not at all. Instead, he followed some sort of a pattern known to no one but him. Sometimes he stopped to shift his gaze from the bowl to the packet in his hand as if calculating the force he needed to apply in order to get a perfect line of mayo.

He was always like that. No matter what was happening around, he would always take his time drawing inexplicable mayo paintings only to be destroyed moments later. Maybe that was his form of meditation. Maybe that was something that calmed his nerves and silenced the voice screaming inside of him. But maybe that wasn't. Maybe that was just a way to get at me, to make me feel even more annoyed and irritated. I never dared to ask.

I followed his movements, hypnotized by the mayo snake that appeared on the pile of blood-red tomatoes. Was it a venomous viper or a harmless racer? And more importantly, who was he?

After all these months, I still couldn't tell. I looked for clues scattered around, but it didn't help. Hélas, I was no Poirot. I was a mere fly trapped in the spider’s web.

I knew he didn't like what I had said, no spider would want to find its prey ravaging the invisible threads desperate to break free. But I had to try, anyway.

I stood there silently, waiting for him to speak up, to announce his verdict, to tell me something. Anything.

‘So?’ I said quietly, holding my breath in anticipation, when waiting became unbearable.

His hand shook slightly as he drew another curved mayonnaise line. Just a tiny twitch, but it meant he was a human after all. Then, he stopped and looked squarely at me, his eyes squinted as if he was trying to read what was on the back of my mind, the only fortress left standing after the grueling ten months of marriage. My heart was racing, and if there had been someone to measure my pulse, I think they would have said that I had just broken the world record. But there were only two of us and a whole lot of unspoken accusations poisoning the air in our kitchen.

'Pass more mayonnaise,' he finally said, his voice devoid of any trace of human emotion again.

My heart thumped, crushing the sprouts of hope that had just began to break through the layers of fear and doubt.

'Yeah, sure,' thought I. 'Mayonnaise.'

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Make sure to watch our live stream with all the winners to get some inspiration and get some valuable writing tips on how to write a winning story. 

And absolutely make sure to read more stories from the contest:
- "It will leave a stain" by Irina Lutsenko (me)
- "To hell with Mayonnaise" by Evgenia Karabatova

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