After nearly a year of the idea being abandoned, the short story contest has been revived! I am your host Obsessed, and the following are the rules for this month''s contest ~ - The theme for this month is "disastrous holiday". Write a serious or joking story about a holiday that has gone wrong; we don't mind what the tone of the story is, as long as it's creative and a pleasure to read! - Please note this IS a short story contest, we don't want essays to read. The minimum is about six average paragraphs and the maximum will be about thirty, but we're willing to alter that. I may change the requirements later, depending on how this month goes. - Please submit only one story per member. - Deadline is the last day of this month. ***NOTE*** - I am looking for one other person to judge the entries with me. Please contact me if you wish to do so ~ Have fun!
Dude, i've missed this contest. I have the perfect story for this if I can sneak some time away from studying to write.
I think I smell a winner already. >:3 Anyways, this sounds pretty good. It's a good motivation for writers, and it's certainly something that will get me off my ass to write. Are our short stories posted here in this thread? I'm assuming so. <3
You can either post them here (preferably under spoiler tags) or just link to them. Remember guys, Im looking for another judge. Must have writing experience and be willing to read perhaps numerous stories depending on how sucessful this is.
My policy is the same as last time. If there are fewer than five competitors in the last week before judging I'll try to help add some competition, as weak as it may end up being.
That's good. Guys I'll be one of the judges this contest, so I hope you do your best. I'll be inspecting everything, making sure only the best is selected. Of course, the main idea is to exercise writing abilities, so don't fret if your story isn't 10/10. just have fun~
Story below. Please do not mind it if Open Office raped some of the indenting: Spoiler Pillars of Pumpkins With a sense of elegant care, the man gently placed the rust-coloured pumpkin upon the weathered wooden desk, his own wispy strands of hair a careless whim compared to the callous simplicity of the old wooden shack. With a ghastly sigh of relief, the old man turned from his decorating to look upon the splendour that he had turned his humble home into. Jumbles upon jumbles of scattered wooden benches and shelves held pumpkins of all size and colour; some with dreary faces carved to scare the children, some simply without a face at all. Large strands of thin material made of the rinds of strange fruit graced the ceiling of the micro-sized structure, giving off a very ethereal feel. The entire building was clearly lopsided; an angle perturbed by the fact that the ground was always steep to the west, where the sun set at the end of the day. Among the mess of Halloween decorating that disturbed the usually peaceful demeanour of his home; the man tiptoed his way around the stacks of pumpkins, looking to find a way towards his prized pet and only friend, Mr. Virgil. “Mr. Virgil, where did ya gone off to?” The old man called out. His composition of thick voice and slight accent travelled upon the breeze throughout the room, tendrils searching for the small ears of his friend. “Right here, sir!” Replied the inhuman, coarse squawking of the voice that beckoned for the old man. Upon the gracing of the familiar voice on the old man’s ears, he quickly and messily scattered himself over to the source, knocking over a few decorative pumpkins in his rough tumble towards Mr. Virgil. The man's melancholic face let out a huge, yellow-toothed grin as he approached his good friend. He held out a shrivelled, ghastly hand in a simplistic gesture of greeting. Mr. Virgil, in turn, gave the man an affectionate literal “peck” on his hand. One would expect without not first seeing whom Mr. Virgil was, he would simply be a normal human man. However this Mr. Virgil was not another dusty human, but a bird; a relatively large, green-feathered parrot with a wide yellow beak as if a miniature banana had found its way to the creature's face. The bird's black bead-like eyes looked around with an extreme sense of perception and a quiet quickness that seemed to be scanning for some sort of obscure material object. “What?” Asked Mr. Virgil, cocking his feathered head sideways. “I is been looking all over for ya!” Replied the man, waving around his arms in emphasis as if crazed. “We is finished the Hallo'een decorating and them children will be here any moment now!” Mr. Virgil, as if in a gesture of solemn contempt, looked down at the dust-strewn floor. “Oh yes, the children,” He stated with a touch of scorn in his voice. “The children, always the children. The children should be here any minute.” It was clear that the man ignored the slight venom in the voice of his friend. “Ah, ah! I mus' get ready for em' an' give them the sweeties!” Looking towards a large pile of stacked pumpkins, he quickly cleared them away with a swift and violent strike from his forearm, many rolling to the floor whilst others smashing to the ground with a loud thump, breaking into splatters of gelatinous inside and hard orange skin. Beyond the mess was a dusty wooden door, windowless, with a sheer obliviousness of water wear along its edges. The hinges of the door were a rich and jagged brownish rust, coating the metal with a dirty grit. The man slowly opened the door, a deathly cracking creak wailing out in despair from the weary metal. The crowded wooden shack was immediately filled with rich, liquid white light; this portal to the world outside cast an ethereal light glow upon the unkempt stacks of pumpkins towering high above the shining wooden desks and shelves. Mr. Virgil let out an impertinent dry squawk, somewhat blinded by the rush of uncompromising light. The man, seething with a horrid grimace, slowly stepped outside. The man was astounded by what he saw beyond him. A bracken moor, barren and grey with the only company of scattered stones and dry, rugged crevices in the broken ground. With widened, partly bloodshot eyes, the man quickly and jauntily ran a dusty distance out into the lifeless blighted world. The sky was a drab, colourless orange that cast a deathly gaze upon the land. Though it was quite bright, there was no visible sun to speak of. The man turned around to where his old shack was. Beyond it he saw more moor; empty, barren land that seemed to stretch on forever. Where was the neighbourhood? The forest to the east and the small, red-bricked houses that were directly to the left of his humble home? The laughter of children and the bouncing of their giant orange-like basketballs hitting the rough pavement that covered the driveways of the small homes? Where were the group of local old men whom would take quick strolls through the street, commenting on the playful residents and letting out hearty laughs that were lined with age and experience of the older days and simpler worlds. It had all disappeared. There was nothing, not even a ruin or acknowledgement of the small little town ever existing. Slumping down to his bare, wrinkled knees, the man looked with desperate, distraught eyes for any sort of indication of civilization. This once joyful, jovial soul had finally been reduced to but a shell; his old frame a now whimpering heap of burgeoning misery and nihilistic realization of how insignificant he was and had been. But, it was then, perhaps through some sense of insanity or a jolt of heartening significance, the man quickly lifted himself up from the dead ground and began to run back to his lone shack in a shaky and unkempt way. His quaintly long beard almost trailed behind him at his increasing speed. He reached the disturbed wooden entrance of his old wooden shack, the door still open and slightly bent as he had previously left it. Scuttling inside, a re-emerging sense of joy slowly overpowering him, he closed the door, blocking the bright light of the moor and entering sheer darkness. It took some time for the man's eyes to adjust to the cold blackness of the room, but his overpowered emotion could not hold it any longer. “Mr. Virgil!” He called out with vigour. There was no reply. “Mr. Virgil?” Repeated the man. “Say somethin'!” Still, no answer. Not even a slipped squeak. A sense of dread began to fill the man. He helplessly began calling out the name of the only friend he ever had, to no reply. As his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, he noticed that his good friend was gone. The only disparate company he had in the silent room were the towers of cold, unfeeling pumpkins that filled the small area. The man now looked at Mr. Virgil's perch with weary, tired eyes. In only a few minutes he had experienced a bone-crushing realization, one that washed over him like a drudging tidal wave. Halloween will not arrive. It will never arrive. He was finally alone in this world.
I really hate this but I don't care. It's my fault for writing it. Also, I consider birthdays holidays. If no one else does then I just messed up this a lot. Oh well. Spoiler Happy Birthday Baby The date was September 24, 2011 and it just so happened that it was also Sharon O. St. George’s birthday and her baby daughter Timothea’s as well. Sharon was a good Christian, went to church every Sunday, said her prayers daily, did good and pious deeds when possible and wholeheartedly believed in the power and righteousness of her Lord God. That’s most likely the reason why every time this date would roll around she felt incredibly guilty. At age thirty several months she’d become pregnant with Timothea she had wavered. She was initially very pleased with herself, propagating seemed to be the natural course of action for a woman of her age and marital status. However, as the weight slowly grew she realized that it wasn’t a burden she wanted to bear, it became more real the fact that she’d have to care for a whole second life. She’d have to feed, bathe, teach, find, guide, and support this child for the better part of her next twenty years. She’d have to be responsible for the child in every way. This scared Sharon quite a bit. She wanted her own life back. Since she’d gotten married straight out of graduate school at age 26 to her husband Edwin M. St. George she’d been walking on air. Everything had been going right and she’d been having fun all the way until they decided to have a child. Only one because of the overpopulation problem that still faced the world. It had seemed like a good idea and it remained the right thing to do, but Sharon couldn’t help but fear that in taking care of her child she’d somehow botch the job royally. But the thought of abortion or giving up the child for adoption never crossed her mind, the weight that weighed on her mind and body was that of a whole life, not just the clump of cells that had barely gotten the chance to divide into other cells that it had started out as. The child was a part of her; her literal progeny and religious sibling under God. Pushing away your own family was by every standard Sharon had grown up with, wrong. In the end, Sharon just had to come to terms with it of time’s own accord. Which meant slowly, because apparently she’d yet to do so, because every time this date rolled around each year she was pulled from the mist of working her parenting and IT jobs and reminded that she still had no idea what she was doing and that she had for a short time not wanted her own daughter. So she sighed and tried to push it out of her mind as she struggled to complete arrangements for her daughter’s third birthday. As a three year old Timothea could already speak fluently enough to participate in conversation and was beginning to form a harsh New England accent like her father‘s. But despite this facility she was not one to talk to anyone, another thing that made Sharon guilty and worried at the same time. Most children that Timothea went to daycare with were regular chatterboxes that their parents couldn’t get to shut up long enough for them to even get in a few words uninterrupted by high pitched chatter. Normally Sharon would be pretty thrilled with all of the compliments about her daughter’s good behavior, but it seemed so unnatural, like something was wrong. Still, the girl managed to pick up a few friends, or rather enthusiasts. Children that gathered around the silent girl plotting ways to get her to speak. They were attracted by a low for of intellectual interest and had no real concern for the girl herself. Now, Edwin was a military contractor and either couldn’t, or wouldn’t ever do anything domestic further than household chores. So he cleaned up the house and did the dishes and washed the clothes, then went off to work for days, weeks, or at the longest months at a time and came back in a disheveled enough state to cause any normal person worry, then passed out for a night stayed home a day or so if he could and started the process over again. With that fact in place Sharon was the one tasked with planning out a small birthday party to amuse the children. Who, with their attention span, were likely to become bored of anything in that could fit into house quickly enough to make most any effort to please them for long essentially pointless. But try she did. Sharon decorated the walls, double childproofed everything and bought copious amounts of food and drink just to be sure she didn’t run out and risk inciting the wrath of her tiny guests. She’d also booked some manner of entertainment, a magician of some sort. Keegan his name was in the advertisement she believed. But that was irrelevant, as long as he entertained the children with outlandish tricks for the hour or so he got paid for it was enough for the, now, slightly bedraggled woman. Sharon cast a glance over the house. Everything was in place with time to spare. Ten minutes of it if the kids were as punctual as Sharon believed everyone should be. So she took the extra time to check back with Timothea for the umpteenth time that day. She was in her room coloring an hour ago and half an hour ago she was asking what calculus was and why there should be a tropic of it and now she was apparently looking up the word ‘persnickety’ because it sounded fake to her. All was as it should be Sharon was assured; or close as it could come to it. Just then there was a ring at the door. They would have to get that annoying thing changed. When they moved into the house four years previously everything about the midsized single family home in the suburbs of New England was changed, save that doorbell and the location. The modest rooms were painted subtle earth tones and accent walls were forgone much to Sharon’s pleasure. The furniture was half consignment shop finds, a fourth Ikea bought, and a fourth wedding gifts. So the house looked like a “relic†from the late twentieth century and Sharon and Edwin loved it that way, for the nominal time that they got to notice it anyways. At the door was the first set of children. The Gates twins. They were dark and quite handsome looking children. Fraternal, not identical, but close enough in appearance to fool anyone unfamiliar with them. They were the ringleaders of Timothea’s group and pretty much the one’s to blame for the whole event that this day was almost certain to become. Still, Sharon graciously greeted them and their parents, invited the little devils in and offered them all the hospitality she had to offer. Within a few minutes the tacit little Timothea was out and staring at her doppelgangers of guests with the same blank expression that always greeted each of them, and their slightly bemused parents were on their way out and everyone was busy greeting the next set of visitors. And so, on it went much in this fashion for the next half of the hour. The final child count was nine visitors to one host and another four or five hours left in the game. Sharon sighed imperceptibly and let them begin with their merriment. After one hour of children running about wildly and screaming for cake, the horrid doorbell rang again. Sharon was about to snap at the children but resisted the urge and simply went to get the door. The magician had arrived in order to, hopefully, pacify the children and make them sit in wide eyed amusement for a little bit. But nothing about the man’s appearance would indicate that any of that was true. The man standing in the door was young, dressed entirely in a slightly cheap and garish looking suit of shades of black and grey, and suspiciously cheery. His almost bluish black hair covered one of his eyes entirely and occasionally dropped a few strands over to interfere with the other half of his vision. This wasn’t what made him seem strange though, it was expected for any magician to be a reek of a bit of eccentricity. It wasn’t his assistant either, the similarly dressed woman looked practically his double save for the significantly lower amount of her skin’s surface area covered by her considerably less conservative black and grey vestment. It was something that Sharon couldn’t quite place at first and didn’t have time to when she was interrupted by the magician who had begun announcing himself. “I am Cecil R.R. Keegan, the magician I presume you asked for.†He made a sweeping bow as he said this and grinned expectantly. “Y-yes. That’s you.†Sharon said absent mindedly trying to grasp a hold of the train of thought he’d interrupted. She couldn’t manage it. “Shall I begin my performance then?†He chirped brightly as he looked around Sharon in to the house he’d yet to be invited into. “Come in first.†“Oh, I will thank you.†He replied as if he hadn’t noticed he was still standing on her front stoop. So Sharon led Cecil R.R. Keegan into the den where most of the party supplies were set up and a few of the children still sat babbling at each other. “Any time you want to start, I’ll gather--†“It’s your birthday, don’t worry a bit about it pet.†Sharon stopped where she was and turned to him indignantly. “I don’t--†“I apologize, I’m usually only talking to Cassandra here.â€, he said motioning to the woman behind him. “Who appreciates the familiarity.†Then he promptly threw himself into deep genuflection. “I see.†Sharon narrowed her eyes. She really didn’t like the man, but it was better dealing with him for a few hours than running after children all day, wasn’t it? “Now.†He grinned almost menacingly. “Children.†With a snap of his fingers and a clap of his hands a cane materialized in his grasp and the children who were milling around the house were suddenly rapt with attention and either staring at Keegan or rushing into the room so they could stare. “Good.†Keegan paced over to the refreshments table and whisked everything on it away with a single whip of the tablecloth. “Better.†The man brushed a few stray hairs out of his one usable eye back into place over the totally blinded one and began his performance. By now everyone in the room save for the magician, his assistant and Sharon were totally enthralled with the show. “Cassandra, would you kindly?†She only smiled back and began singing something the Sharon couldn’t understand, it was clearly English but the inflections of her voice made it impossible to tell exactly what it was. “What--†Sharron began but was hushed softly before she could finish. “Please just wait a bit.†He said waving a hand flippantly. “Now, where was I?†He touched a hand to his head and pulled a top hat from thin air and placed it on his head before beginning to sweep his hands about slowly. Soon a low rumble in his voice indicated that he’d begun chanting along with Cassandra’s song. Sharon wanted to say something, to stop whatever it was that was making her feel this terrible sense of dread, but she couldn’t move her body a single inch. It almost amazed her that she was still breathing she felt so still. But Sharon was too preoccupied with the performance and making sense of the arcane show to put too much thought into it. As she listened she slowly she began understand the chanting and singing. It was a song she’d heard before. Keegan’s part came to her first. “Go to sleep little babe.†Then Cassandra‘s followed. “Go to sleep little babe.†“Your momma's gone away and your daddy's gonna stay.†The table suddenly disappeared and Keegan began walking towards the children. Sharon’s blood turned to ice. She tried to stop him but remembered she couldn’t move and inch and stood in helpless disbelief. “Didn't leave nobody but the baby.†A few more pieces of furniture disappeared. “Go to sleep little babe.†Next the decorations disappeared from the walls and Cassandra began circling the fold of children. “Go to sleep little babe.†The room was totally emptied of adornment and furnishings. The emptied space belonged to Cecil R.R. Keegan now. “Everybody's gone in the cotton and the corn.†Suddenly, a child fell to sleep. “Didn't leave nobody but the baby.†“You're a sweet little babe.†Another child followed. “You're a sweet little babe.†“Honey in the rock and the sugar don't stop.†And another. “Gonna bring a bottle to the baby.†“Don't you weep pretty babe.†And another. “Don't you weep pretty babe.†“She's long gone with her red shoes on.†And another. “Gonna need another loving babe.†“Go to sleep little babe.†And another. “Go to sleep little babe.†“You and me and the devil makes three.†And another. “Don't need no other lovin' babe.†“Go to sleep little babe.†And another, until all who remained staring at the magician was Sharon’s own child. The little girl stared inquisitively at t man who approached her and waited. Sharon tried to scream, to run, to do anything that would stop the man. But she could do nothing and Keegan took a hold of her child and began his slow walk towards the door. “Go to sleep little babe.†Cassandra ceased her circling and followed him. As Keegan was passing Sharon he stopped briefly and leaned over to whisper his final line into her ear. “Come lay bones on the alabaster stones and be my ever-loving’ baby.â€
