I just hoped he clarified the arrangement with Mike's wife first. Good work Tom, though, for taking the initiative. I guess he can just explain to Valerie that her husband was attacked and killed by pistol-cougars.

Good to see that 80 words or less can get me thinking. Nice work.

Wow, a lot happens! One thing is unclear to me: It sounds like Mike has an affair with Tom's wife, but Tom kills Mike to steal HIS wife. Did I miss something there? Saying that the ribs are good and Valerie looks great was a well-done hint toward where this was headed. I love the imagery of the mountains and the sun as they hike. Nicely done!

This works really well. When I saw you mention the challenge, I did wonder how you would do something like that. But I think you did it brilliantly here, and like all good short stories it has a nice twist. I like the simplicity of it, the ease of it all. Really good stuff, well done!

From Roadhouse

I think you accomplished the goal of a beginning, middle, and end really well in this piece. When you spoke of it in the review thread I was wondering how you might handle such a thing, so I thought this was a unique sort of challenge that gets writers thinking.

I'm wondering though, what the significance of "Wednesday" is, as opposed to just not naming the day. I mean, every word should could in this sort of piece, so I felt like you could forego the Wednesday word for something else - then again, I don't know what, haha. But otherwise...

Maybe "They eat ribs and homemade fires" instead of "have"? Same word count, but it enriches the verbs more. I like the detail about high noon, it evokes Old west mentalities, and I think it was a good setting/symbol for the "draw/shoot" senario that happened. Unexpected twist ending too, which was a good strength. Overall I thought this was an interesting read!