PosterTHE SHORT COURSE
A distance swimmer trains alone in an empty pool before dawn, for a race no one from her town has entered in twenty years.
by Awaiting creator · Launched Aug 20, 2026
A story idea on the Poster shelf. Posters take no pledges.
About this title
Synopsis
The YMCA in Cheat Fork closed in 2011 and the town has never quite gotten around to filling in the pool, so there are still eight lanes of cold water sitting in a dark room at the bottom of Front Street. Della Rasnick is in it at five every morning, alone, swimming a mile and a half in the dark while the caretaker sits in his truck and keeps the door unlocked and tells nobody. The qualifier is four hundred miles east, in June, and nobody from this town has entered it since 2006. Entry, travel and two nights come to about nine hundred dollars, and Della has never asked anyone here for a thing.
Who this is about
Della Rasnick swims the mile. She trains alone at five in the morning in the pool of a closed YMCA in Cheat Fork, West Virginia, because the caretaker leaves a door open for her.
What goes wrong
The qualifying meet is four hundred miles away and costs money she does not have. Nobody from Cheat Fork has entered it since 2006, and nobody there has been asked for anything in longer.
What's at stake
Asking the town means standing up at a meeting and saying out loud that she thinks she is good, in a place where that is the one unforgivable thing. Entry closes in six weeks.
Why it keeps going
Each episode is one more dark morning, one more thousand yards in water nobody is paying to heat, and one more person she has not yet worked up to asking.
Takeaway
In some places asking for help is harder than the thing you need the help for.
Shelves
Themes
Story, in the creator's words
Not provided yet
Style
Not provided yet
Characters
Not provided yet
Tech stack
Not provided yet
Schedule
Not provided yet
Production plan
Not provided yet
Creator
Track record on ArchTV
188
Campaigns run
0
Titles on ArchTV
Delivery record
- Campaigns funded: 0
In their words