First Official Facepunch Writing Competition! Fabulous Prizes! - General

[QUOTE=Hoboiam;23889793]Fuck why did I not see this thread 'til now :( Dammit. Is there another contest planned any time soon?[/QUOTE] Possibly, hopefully, maybe!

Better start coming up with a plot now, then.

[QUOTE=TheDiddler;23890442]Better start coming up with a plot now, then.[/QUOTE] Wait till the theme of the next competition is announced :v:

PSHHHHHHHHHHHHH, only little girls are afraid of a little gambling

[QUOTE=Hoboiam;23889793]Fuck why did I not see this thread 'til now :( Dammit. Is there another contest planned any time soon?[/QUOTE] Hopefully there'll be another one really soon after this one ends.

Any news on the short list Nigey?

[QUOTE=Dokaman;23894360]Any news on the short list Nigey?[/QUOTE] It's becoming clear, but no announcements until we've got a unanimous decision.

[QUOTE=Nigey Nige;23895185]It's becoming clear, but no announcements until we've got a unanimous decision.[/QUOTE] When will you have the decision?

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;23888952]On an unrelated note: your avatar is heartwarming.[/QUOTE] On a note related to your unrelated note: thank you! :3: [QUOTE=Hoboiam;23889793]Fuck why did I not see this thread 'til now :( Dammit. Is there another contest planned any time soon?[/QUOTE] Not planned, per say, but definitely likely. To run another contest we need more people help donate fabulous prizes. I'd like to host the next competition, but I'm too poor to buy any prizes. If I were to be the future host (also because NigeyNige isn't sure he will host next), I would plan on taking this shit a step up in a couple ways. One, I would allow a more open theme. It isn't as much of a pain to judge across different genres as I thought it might be. I would hope to have two categories to enter: comedy or not comedy, and I would base each around a one sentence themes. It might be something like, "Awkward from the very start." You can interpret something like that in any way you'd like. All you need to do is clearly relate your story to that theme. Two, I would set up some single-blind judging. I would be in sole control of the E-mail account and then send the entries to the judges for reading. I would be an organizer and not a judge. I have some other thoughts as well, but I don't want to bore all of you. This thread is about the present competition. A future thread will be about the future, so if you're curious then have some patience. [QUOTE=:smug:;23895210]When will you have the decision?[/QUOTE] In a few hours we will post the winning entries and a couple honorable mentions. A few hours after that we will compile ALL of the stories with judges comments. We'll even be posting some of our favorite lines. That way you can read through them all and learn what we were thinking when we judged the pieces! Our comments will be posted with our second batch of posts (not the winners, but with the people who didn't place in the top 3), that way you can appreciate and discuss the winning works without our comments in the way. We will only be posting the FP names on the three winning works. If you would like to claim your work AFTER we post it then feel free to do so. We will update the post with your name on it at that point.

All i seem to be able to comment on for the best stories is postitive things. I really have to look deep for things in some of them.

I'm excited :allears: I'm gonna have to go in a while, probably gonna miss the announcements D:

hey guys :siren:[highlight][B][I][U]MOTHERFUCKING ANNOUNCEMENTS INCOMING[/U][/I][/B][/highlight]:siren:

[QUOTE=Nigey Nige;23897586]hey guys :siren:[highlight][B][I][U]MOTHERFUCKING ANNOUNCEMENTS INCOMING[/U][/I][/B][/highlight]:siren:[/QUOTE] How long? :v:

[quote=:smug:;23897663]how long? :v:[/quote] t minus 5 minutes

[QUOTE=Nigey Nige;23897756]t minus 5 minutes[/QUOTE] [IMG]http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/2582294/img/Anonymous/fuuu.png[/IMG] Too long.

everyone get the fuck in here

[img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6092109/banner.png[/img] :siren: [b]WINNERS[/b] :siren: If you won first second or third please pm us to claim your prize! 1st place: [quote=Darius Says Hello by Big Dumb American] The basement window slides up easily. Darius isn't surprised. He'd been here weeks before for an informal faculty dinner party, and had excused himself from a lively discussion of next years’ curriculum long enough to ensure that he had his own entrance. In a quiet little town like O'Fallon, an unlocked window can go unnoticed for a long time. Darius gently drops his tool kit through the narrow, ground-level window, wincing at the hollow ‘bong’ it makes as it lands on the washing machine. He tenses, waiting for a light upstairs to turn on— for a suspicious voice to call out who's there. Endless seconds pass, and slowly Darius relaxes. With a relieved sigh, he lies flat on his stomach and scoots, feet first, into the darkness of the open window. He gracefully steps down from the washing machine onto the cold, concrete floor and locks the window behind him. His dark eyes, still just as sharp as they had been twenty years before, adjust quickly to the dark. Darius picks up his bag and exits the small laundry nook. Pulling the wooden partition closed behind him, Darius quickly inventories the spacious room he’s entered. It’s finished with a plush beige carpet and the walls are salmon-colored. A repeating print pattern of cheery looking elephants marches around their upper border, and the guts of an overturned toy box litter the floor in front of the TV. Darius tosses his tool bag onto a small polka-dot beanbag chair and begins sorting through it. He removes a large plastic sheet, which, after bunting aside a stuffed bear, is carefully spread out on the floor. Darius undresses, folding his clothes into the sheet’s center, and ties the corners of the tarp over the neat pile. Fully nude, he places the bundle back into the bag. Darius closes his eyes for a moment, savoring the feel of the cold basement air on his hairless body, then slips on a pair of crepe-soled slippers and some surgical gloves. He removes his tools and shoulders the bag before moving to the stairway. Naked except for his gloves and slippers, Darius ascends the steps. A long, razor-edged carving knife is loosely clenched in his right fist— an old Polaroid camera dangles by the strap from his left. The basement empties into a clean, modern kitchen. Moonlight streaming through the glass porch door casts an otherworldly hue over everything. Darius’s slippered feet are whisper-quiet on the artificial marble tiling. Tile gives way to polished hardwood floors as Darius enters the living room. He gracefully moves through the room, running his gloved hand over the furniture and along the walls. He fondles a few chess pieces from a glass table by the couch, idly ducking under the ceiling fan as he passes by. On the mantelpiece stands a framed photograph of a sad, beautiful woman. She wears her hair, a brilliant blond, at shoulder length. Her radiant smile and bright eyes are a careful disguise. Darius Knows. Standing in front of the woman and grinning at the camera through a missing tooth is a smaller, undeveloped version of herself. She has her mother’s perfect golden hair, a tiny twin of her pretty little nose, and that same pointed chin. Cute. On the left side of the couple stands a man with brown hair, his arm around the shoulders of Darius’s poor, lost woman. Darius removes the photograph from its frame and slides it into the print-tray of his camera. He glides through the entryway’s arched passage, and moves up the wooden stairwell, standing near the edges of the risers lest a weak board creak. At the top is a cozy, recessed sitting area lined with bookcases, which Darius pleasantly thumbs through before moving on. A short hallway runs horizontal to the sitting area: to the left lies the little girl's room, to the right is the guest room and the master bedroom. Darius turns left, gliding silently down the hallway. He passes a small bathroom and stops in front of a closed door covered in flower stickers. A gentle nudge with the knife and it swings open noiselessly. The room beyond is thickly carpeted, the walls clothed in yellow-and-pink striped wallpaper. A congregation of stuffed animals stand watch from the top of a small wooden dresser, and several others are piled on the bed, glass eyes staring indifferently at the intruder. Above the hem of the poofy white comforter is a drift of brilliantly blond hair and a single small arm clad in silky white pajamas. Darius stands by the little girl’s bed, looking down at her. The corners of his thin mouth twitch into a hesitant smile, and he brushes a gossamer strand of golden hair from her brow. She looks so much like her mother. Gently, he picks up a stuffed bunny (I Heart You! stitched on its belly) and places it over the girl's face. Her small form stirs. A sleepy, confused moan (uwaa?) is muffled by the bunny's soft body. Darius slams the knife through its furry stomach. The soggy 'crunch' seems very loud in the stillness. (I He-----ou!) Darius props the girl into a sitting position against the wall, across from the door of the master bedroom. In the deep shadows of the hallway, her sodden pajamas, white only minutes ago, now look black. Her crimson-streaked hair hangs limply--mercifully obscuring her ruined face. Her head rests against the edge of an ornamental table bearing a big, decorative vase. Darius reaches out from the shadows, his arm slick to the elbow with gore, and firmly prods the vase. It teeters, falls, breaks. From the other side of the master bedroom’s closed door, Darius hears a gasp, followed by excited whispering. A woman's voice, sleepy but scared (what was that?); a man's, alert (Stay here!). Footsteps approach, and the door to the bedroom swings open, hiding Darius behind it. There is an eternity of silence, then, "Charlie...?" A slight man with brown, sleep-ruffled hair and delicate features runs into the hallway, collapsing to his knees in front of the little girl. Darius quietly closes the door behind him. The woman's voice, now fully awake, panicked, pushes through it, "What? What is it!?" The man's full, somehow feminine mouth works soundlessly, his reaching hand hesitates a few inches short of the girl’s dark, matted hair, not quite daring to touch it. Darius steps forward and places his hand on the man's shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. He turns his head, looking up into Darius's dark eyes. "Charlie," the man whispers to Darius, as if that explained everything. Darius nods solemnly. The man’s eyes move back to the girl, but before his head can follow, Darius rams the long knife through the soft flesh beneath his jaw. His delicate mouth is slammed shut, the force of the blow shattering his teeth, and a thick gout of blood bursts through his lips in a spray, speckling Darius’s bare chest. Charlie’s father makes a choked gurgling noise (uwaa?) in the back of his throat as his eyes roll up to whites and his lids droop to cover them. His body sags. Darius wrenches the knife free and gives the man a gentle shove. He slumps over, landing in his daughter's lap. From the other side of the door, panic. Questions, yelling, crying. Forcing himself to be patient, Darius checks the lens of his camera, then opens the bedroom door and walks in, grinning shyly. "Hello," he says sheepishly. [/quote] 2nd Place: [quote=Only us by Strayebird]It was mid-morning. As on most days, the air was thick with dust, almost chokingly dense. This intoxicating dust permeated each and every corner of the town. The town god had forgotten. In this place there were no signs of life, not even plant or insect. Suddenly a bird flying overhead cuts through this silence. It’s wings battered and broken, it still retains flight. The windows of the houses were either boarded or broken, their inhabitants long escaped from Sodom. There was a time this small town would have been awash with life. Children playing in the streets, cats and dogs mewing and barking respectively, a painfully archetypal scene of pure Americana. In the past this town was a bustling centre of business activity, the roads would have been lined with cars, the pavements lined with men and women. This was before the occurrence that altered everything. The single, selfish, final act. Now there was no-one in the town. The dusty barren land had given all it could yield. Now all that defined this dead land was the dust that inhabited it. The last residents of this town, flocked in their millions and millions. These motes now spend their days falling slowly to the ground, only to be thrown into the air once again by the sighing wind. It is through these dust particles that two men appear. The one on the right is a young man. Mid twenties. Unkempt hair and ratty beard. He has no name, but for the sake of this tale, he shall be called Cain. His fellow, on the left, is older. In his thirties. He shall be known as Abel. His eyes are older than his face. In his life he has seen much. These two latter-day wandering Jews entered the town, dishevelled and thoroughly morose. Abel, the older of the two, approached a group of trash cans. He carelessly kicked them over, then rooted through them. There was little in them of use. An empty tin of dog food, a few glass bottles, and some discarded human teeth. He straightened his back and stood up. His posture was poor, degraded by poor sleeping conditions. What’s a dog food tin with no food? He asked to no one in particular What? Cain replied absent mindedly I said, what’s a dog food tin when it ain’t got no food in it? Cain shrugged his shoulders What’s a town when it ain’t got no people in it? He looked over at Abel, who looked back It’s still a town, just ain’t got no inhabitants is all. They both nodded knowingly, and continued on their venture. This town had little to nothing of aid to these men. Like many towns before it, items were either destroyed by the cults or looted in a mad ecstasy of fumbled violence and unintelligible fear. The world to these men was nought but a shell anymore, their lives rendered just as empty by it’s collapse. Cain approached a house and apprehensively pulled at a door handle. It refused to move. He pulled again, still to no avail. In a short fit of rage, he yanked the door off of it’s hinges, and cast it to the ground like a cigarette end. He entered the house, but was quickly overcome by retching and dry heaves. The bodies inside must have been there for several years, as the flesh was all but rotted away, and the rictus smiles were stuck in their faces. After fighting to overcome his spasms, Cain righted himself and continued through the house. In the kitchen there was a knife, dulled but stainless and with very little rust considering the length of time it had been left. He took it and placed it within his bag. He muttered to himself Ain’t nothing more important that a sharp edged piece of metal no more. A quick run around showed no other useful objects. The plaster was hanging from the walls, and old stains of blood gave hints as to the end that these people had met. Cain looked around with misty eyes. In his childhood, he had lived in a house just like this. Small, stuffy in the summer and cold in the winter, but a real family home. Now he was sleeping in ditches and under railway arches to survive. As he made his exit from the house, he noticed an engagement ring on the finger of one of the corpses. With a quick glance towards the ring, then to the heavens, then back to the ring, he covered his mouth and advanced toward the body. The ring came off from the finger with ease, as the fingers had hardly any of the decaying flesh left on them. He placed the ring in his pocket, crossed himself, and exited the house once more. In the other houses, Abel had worse luck. Sharp corners and spiders webs seemed to be what the majority of these building were populated by. He kicked a door of one house open, the flies from inside flew out in their hundreds, causing him to lose his balance. He cursed under his breath in anger, stood up, and kicked over another trash can. There was something heavy in it, something with limbs. He looked down at it in vague horror. There was no way an adult human could fit in that can. It was a child. Abel turned away and walked out swiftly into the street and sat down on the curb. He spat onto the floor, his saliva laced with blood. He looked at the cloudless sky, the immense, unrelenting sublime blue lawn above him. He smirked grimly. He seemed to be the only person who enjoyed life more post apocalypse. Before he had debts, taxes, rent, child support, and a $5000 fine to pay off. Now he was free, like the birds in the sky, at least when there was birds. The dead children were the one thing that bothered him though, with kids of his own somewhere out there, He hated having to see tiny bodies everywhere he went. Suddenly there was a rumble in the distance, like an ungodly fist pounding sheet metal. Abel was instantly alerted to his surroundings. He ran to the edge of the town. He kept his eyes to the sky, searching for any signs of activity. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, not even anything to smell. It was a bomb. A piece of destructive art, created for one great show. It was miles off, but also worryingly powerful. He muttered something unintelligible under his breath, then walked back to his throne on the sidewalk. The dead are the racial majority in this world. There is no afro-american, no Hispanic, no Caucasian. Every race is joined as a single cell, struggling to survive in a corrupted land. The cults did not discriminate. Everyone was game. The same went for the harvesters, the sodomites, and the syndicates. Hate and death and rape and torture had no time for racial preferences, they were too busy claiming their trophies. Nietzsche was right, god was dead, and we were his murderers. Cain took a seat down next to Abel in the street. He squinted up at the sky, then turned his gaze toward his partner Ain’t no clouds out. He said Nope. Abel replied half heartedly. He stood up and walked across the street to an adjacent mailbox. He checked inside it with cautious optimism. His pose and positioning were typical of old world suburban men, checking for bill letters and magazine subscriptions. His heart grew heavy with nostalgia for the past, for all he had lost. He covered his face with a calloused, battered hand. Abel shut the box and withdrew a cigarette from his bag. He checked for a lighter all over his body, all the while coughing and wheezing. He found no lighter, and cursed loudly. Cain stood up abruptly. He walked over to Abel and slapped the bone coloured stick out of his mouth. What the fuck you do that for? Abel exclaimed angrily We’re out here to survive, and you’re goin’ around putting death straight into your lungs. You are risking both yours and my futures with this shit. Cain had grabbed the lapels of Abel’s Jacket and was lifting him off the ground, his feet dangling. I mean, We are risking our lives against monsters and bandits and god knows what else. Abel slapped the cold hard hands off of his jacket and pushed the emaciated young man away from him There ain’t no monsters. There ain’t no monsters, and there ain’t no demons, and there ain’t no angels and there ain’t no gods nor anything. He screamed at his partner. There’s only us. Cain laughed coarsely at this, but there was no mirth in his soul. They stared long and hard at each other. This lasted for an unknown amount of time, though it felt like decades. The two men stood opposing, looking a picture of salvation and damnation. Another rumble cracked out through the silence, it seemed closer than the last. The men gave up the war of minds to continue searching for supplies. As they trawled through trash cans and bags and boxes, the loud noises of distant explosions became more and more frequent. Cain stood up straight, his head high like Abraham Lincoln on an old world penny. He turned to Abel and shouted Does it give you comfort? What? I said, does it give you comfort to believe there are no monsters or demons out there? You’ve seen what I’ve seen, We both know what America’s inhabitants are capable of, are you telling me that you prefer to think that was all done by humans? I mean pardon my language but- He was cut short, there was a new noise that had invaded the once balmy, peaceful streets of this dead town. An engine. The two men hurried for cover, inside the dilapidated decking of an old house. They hid desperately as the truck rolled past. The men that manned the truck were thin, sickly, and hellish. Every man wielded some form of horrific blunt object. They gargled in monstrous accents, and made aggressive hand movements in various directions. Clouds had formed in the sky, and a sudden humidity had infected the area. The two men cowered from this vehicle of the afflicted, their minds awash with images of cannibalism and sodomy. an eternity went by, and finally the van of the damned passed, leaving the motes of dust thrown up in it’s wake. The once calmed inhabitants once again thrown into a frenzy. The two wanderers emerged from the refuge, and surveyed the sky once more. Bad clouds Cain put shortly. Abel nodded slowly and started to walk the way that the truck had entered from. Cain joined him and pulled out the ring that he had salvaged. It had a tiny cross made from precious stones. The stones had been dulled by years of neglect, but were still as pure and beautiful as ever. Abel smirked, and put the cigarette in his mouth once more, just to feel it’s presence. Cain turned to his world weary partner, noting the lines in his face like cracks in a valley. Abel turned to Cain, with a smile more like a grimace on his face. They did not speak for a long while, and when they did, Abel whispered No, no it don’t make it any better. [/quote] 3rd place: [quote=Colour by Smug]I did it again. I made the mistake again. I fell asleep...again. Already I see her whispering, beautiful mouth. Her twisting, bright hair. Her colourful face. She’s calling out to me…again. Her wide, grey eyes looking at me with panic. The expression of deepest pain and fear that I have come to know so well over these past few months. It’s been 91 days. I’ve been having the same dream, more often than not. Memories that I try and strangle during the day come back to me with full force at night, when I sleep. If I sleep. I feel torn. Once upon a time there was a girl. She painted, I painted…we both leeched off each other’s creative juices, each thinking the other was the best thing since Da Vinci. Looking back, it was less of a romance than a fleeting flurry of lust. Either way, the events that were to follow our innocent delve into the romantic arts of painting and love were unforeseeable, yet very preventable and I have being plagued with guilt ever since. It’s all my fault. I decided that authority was from hell, and that I was a messenger of God so to speak, sent to paint crude images of ‘the real world’. I’m not sure whether I truly believed in what I was painting, but at the time it seemed like something to work against. That’s always been the problem with me, I’ve always had ambitions to help a common cause for the underdog against the ‘Overlords’, the ones with an advantage. I did this for a while, resenting every policeman, every community officer who moved me along from the street corner where I was selling my paintings. I met her through drugs. As an aspiring visionary artist, I had decided that special inspiration was necessary, especially with the illegal tag that came with the miniature bag of herbs. Me and a few friends of mine would go to a local woodland, that was almost completely empty of life apart from the odd gang of teenagers. We would go to the side of a scummy stream, and then puff away at our low quality mix of narcotics. All of a sudden the woodland would turn from the dull grey that I saw in my sober existence to a duller, colder grey. I couldn’t see colours when I was high, yet I could only paint with the comforting feeling of this mental manipulation. One time my friends brought along her. It was nothing unusual, everyone brought along a friend every so often to these magical experiences that we encountered. No one could quite put their finger on it, but there was something special about lighting up in that desolate patch of grass next to the foul stream. She seemed average, not particularly stunning or inspirational…but as soon as I had taken in those magical fumes, she seemed the world to me. All of a sudden the bright woodland lit up, for once I was not only feeling but seeing what the others constantly claimed to see. Then it ended, yet with the sudden crash to earth I still saw her as what my delirious mind had portrayed her to be. We confessed our ‘love’ within a week. She liked painting, I liked painting. It was meant to be… Over the next month I began to give up painting and Class C drugs. Well, I didn’t give up the drugs as such…I just found out (with the help of several new friends) that it was a lot more profitable to deal rather than consume them. I realised that my painting was nothing more than the 5 year old’s letter to Channel 4 requesting less obscenity in their shows, I had to find a new way to mess with the dictators. She didn’t seem to care much for my new, more decadent lifestyle. I could tell this, but she didn’t mention anything. By now we had started renting out a flat together, although at times I would choose to send her away for a night or two…as I would have ‘business associates round’. The way I treated her was unfair, to say the least. We would sometimes argue, often break up. But I lived on at ease knowing that she would always return to me. Some people would have described me at the time as a self-righteous wannabe gangster. This was probably the most accurate description of me, but I didn’t care. I had powerful friends, which in turn made me feel powerful…like I was doing something to hassle the authority that governs over this land. I would carry with me a gun, no one could touch me while I had a gun. Not a particularly good or powerful gun, more of a pistol that could do considerable damage from close range. I didn’t realise that holding a gun didn’t make me Al Capone. Fast forward a couple months. I start working very closely with a prominent figure in the area, a man who has many business interests…legitimate and illegitimate alike. To put it as bluntly as possible, I jumped deep into the world of organised crime. This became my life. I could no longer back out, I was successful…these people wanted me. For once I was doing harm to the capitalist society I so freely hated. Or at least, so I thought. Now don’t get me wrong, I was no extremist wannabe politician. I had no real view on how the country should be run, in fact I didn’t really have any alternative planned. In fact, all I really knew about politics was that I hated my Government in every way possible. I had no time for any form of politician, whether they be right-wing or left-wing or in the middle. Things started taking off. Me and this powerful man…we started getting big. Months went by, our operations started going international. I was happy to serve under such a great man, a man who understood what I was about. We had both had hard lives; we had both never truly known our parents and we had both grown up alone. He understood me to the depths of which not even she could. She. This word passed my lips more than any other. I started getting resentful, this ‘woman’ was trying to ruin my adventures; she said I was insane. She would often try to leave, claiming she couldn’t live with me anymore and that I had become an evil shadow of my former self. But I always knew she would come back, and she did. She made the mistake of falling in love. I never learnt to love, I had less attachment to this dysfunctional relationship than she did. I was in complete control. I was never power hungry, I don’t think. I reckon I had more of a fear of not having any power at all, of being completely powerless to edit events that unravel before my eyes. I grew and nurtured a resentful nature towards other humans, why couldn’t they be like me and him? We were so insightful, we would sit late at night planning, discussing. It was almost as if he was the father figure I’d never known. “You have to get rid of her. She’s in our way. I can sense in you that you feel guilty for leading this life, this life of crime. But is it really crime? Look within yourself, you know what you’re doing is right. You’re teaching those suits in charge a lesson they won’t forget. Don’t feel bad now, after all we’ve accomplished! Imagine her as a rope tying you down. One swift cut and you’re free to live your dreams. She doesn’t care about you, no one does. No one but me. Do it tonight and we’ll move away, far away. We’ll go to London and we’ll do it together, without her holding you back. You know it’s the right decision, friend”, he persuaded. I thought he was right. Later that night, I watched him kill her. I wish he had done it quicker. Her twisting, bright hair waved frantically, her colourful face drained grey. She called out to me…over and over again. Her wide, grey eyes looking at me with panic and sadness. Looking at me…not him. I woke up the next morning…I assume that he’d dumped the body, in a canal or such. I have flashes of memories of watching the dumping of the body…the killing of her seemed like one big nightmare. I went to meet him, to do what he had proposed – to go to London and expand our already huge crime ring. He wasn’t there. I went to find colleagues that me and him had worked with on multiple occasions. They didn’t know him. She said I was insane. I couldn’t see colours when I was high. Until her. Now she’s gone. All I see is grey. This gun looks grey to me. Maybe if I pull the trigger it’ll turn purple, or yellow. Firing is the only way I can learn to drop the pistol.[/quote] :siren: [b]HONORABLE MENTIONS[/b] :siren: Congrats! We liked your stories and thought they had artistic merit, but were out shined by the others. Everyone can continue to improve, even the winners, so don't feel bad. Another entry by BDA that could have won had it not been a 'bonus entry' [quote=Coming Home by Big Dumb American]Coming Home The young man sat in his car, looking out his windshield at the arrangement of wide, red brick buildings below. He’d been driving aimlessly, simply enjoying the day, when he passed the sign marking the entrance to this small community and was hit by a wave of almost crippling nostalgia. He’d been parked on the shoulder of road for the last hour. Anybody looking in would’ve seen a man of about twenty, with plain features and short hair that may have once been an almost shockingly bright blond, but which was now darkening towards a light, streaky brown. His eyes, the same electric blue they had probably been when he first opened them, seemed to be far away. After some time, he keyed the engine and drive down the winding road leading to the wagon-circle arrangement of apartment buildings. He drove the long way around the small neighborhood, looking out the open window, lost in long-ago. That’s the corner I always skidded my bike through [the finish line, Charlie wins the cup!] and there’s the fence Johnny and I used to squeeze under to get into the [mysterious wilderness/ancient ruins] and oh-my-god the rock outcropping on the hill is still there it was [asylum/fortress/SAFE] I buried Speedy there, my favorite spot for my favorite hamster(!) He deliberately eased his car into an available space in front of building number [Home!] and killed the engine, listening to it tick for a few minutes before he got out and approached. It wasn’t really one, but two buildings underneath a single peaked roof. Between them ran a narrow concrete [bunker, fortify the entrance] hall lined with doors slightly inset into the red brick walls on either side. On the left, an old, but well-maintained stairwell led to the second story [pirate ship] walkway. Its aging planks creaked and groaned under his feet as he ascended. At the top of the stairs, he stopped, looking out over the railing of the walkway at the [battlefield, football stadium, coliseum uncharted sea active volcanoalienplanetbustlingcityariddesertOHMYGOD] big field below him, fighting an almost nauseating wave of memory. After another short struggle, he tore himself away and walked up the hall. And there was his door. His hand unconsciously grabbed the knob and had tensed to turn it, but he quickly pulled it away, embarrassed. After a moment of hesitation, he knocked twice. Softly. It won’t open(…) The door opened. A young women looked out at him, her brown hair pulled back with a Scrunchee, cautious curiosity in her eyes. She looked to be in her mid-twenties. “Can I help you?” She asked after a seemingly endless moment. He stared back at her, mouth working silently, scrambling for words. “No—yes! I don’t… I thought maybe… Ah, shit. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here.” He quickly turned and started back towards the stairs, pushing back bitter tears. You goddamn baby. What did you expect? “Hey, hold on a minute,” the woman in the doorway called after him, “Wait!” Reluctantly he stopped and turned halfway around to face her, looking embarrassed. “What do you want?” She asked, firmly. He took a moment to gather his words. “I grew up here. I drove past this place and just... I wanted to see it again.” He shrugged. “It’s totally inappropriate though. I’m sorry for wasting your time.” “Oh,” she said. Her cautious eyes studied him. After a moment they softened. She sighed with resignation, “Well come on then. Would you like anything to drink?” The young man stared back at her, lips pursed in a small “O” of surprise. He looked unsure, but turned to follow her inside when she retreated a step to make room for him. The door tried to swing shut behind him, but stuck on the frame. The woman grunted as she absently shoved it home. An old habit. The young man shook his head. For a moment he had a queer instance of double-vision, seeing the furniture there now, and a ghost of the furniture that had existed there nearly ten years ago. The general arrangement of the living space was much the same as his own family’s furniture had been (such small quarters leave little room for imagination). A toy bulldozer lay on its side by the couch’s leg. “My son’s,” she said from the small, attached kitchen off to his right. “He’s at KinderCare up the road, by the elementary school.” The young man smiled at her, nodding. He had gone to both. She pulled two Cokes from the fridge. He accepted his gratefully. The woman sat down at the plastic Wal-Mart patio furniture which served as her dining set and motioned for him to do the same. “When did you live here? For how long?” “I can’t really remember,” he said. “It feels like I lived here forever, but time moves slower when you’re a kid. Probably it was only three or four years, but it feels like I spent my entire childhood here. I guess we moved out about ten years ago.” She was smiling, but her finger was making an impatient twirling gesture. Let’s have it, keep going. He sipped his coke, thinking about how to continue. “I don’t know why I came. I wasn’t planning to, but when I saw this place from the road it seemed like I had to. The years I spent living in this apartment were the happiest, most optimistic of my life. “After we moved out I had to learn how to grow up. For a long time, everywhere I went seemed hostile. But I’m an adult now. It’s time to start building my new life, and I guess I was hoping I could begin it in such a solid foundation as this,” he said, looking at the overturned bulldozer toy. “But it looks like you’re already doing that.” They sat in silence for a while, looking down at their drinks. In the room below them, a clock started chiming, marking off each hour with a hollow bong. Its muffled sounds seemed very loud in the stillness. He finished his drink and stood up. “Thank you for letting me come in. I’m sorry for wasting your time.” He started to turn, hesitated, and then looked at her again and said, “Could I just look at that room up the hall before I go? The small one on the left?” She nodded, but remained seated. She was still looking down at her drink, and some of her hair had come loose. It obscured her eyes like a veil. It was the boy’s room, of course. The young man stood in the doorway, with one hand on the frame. It was a small, plain room with a walk-in closet in the far corner. Toys were spread out over the rug, the tiny bed unmade. A plastic desk with crayon-shaped legs sat against the wall, and sunlight streamed through the slitted blinds, motes of dust spun lazily in their sharp rays of light. The closet door stood open, and he could see a sleeping bag was laid out on its floor. [camping]. “You really liked it here?” Asked a voice at his shoulder. The young man nodded. “I read my first book right there. It was ‘Hop on Pop,’ by Dr. Seuss. I got so excited that I... Well, I hopped on Pop. Must have been a weekend, because he was actually home, sleeping on the couch. Thank you for letting me see it again. This is a good place for your boy.” “His father is gone.” “You’ll both be okay.” She regarded him for a moment, and then hugged him fiercely. After he left, she called her friend from the restaurant and traded shifts. She picked her son up from KinderCare (I thought you worked again, mommy). On the way home they rented a movie and ordered some pizza.[/quote] [quote=The Sour Taste of Guilt by DemonicDazz] Mischieviously, the little boy eyed up the various pick-‘n’-mix jars on the pristine shelf in front of him. He outstretched his sweating hand, lifted one of many plastic lids and tightly grabbed a, rather large, handful of Smarties. A mouth watering assortment of gastronomic delights and rainbow coloured teeth-destroyers quickly entered the vast depths of his tattered jean pockets. With his young criminal endeavour completed, and a beaming smile on his face, he charged down the sweet aisle, of which he was at one end, to rejoin his mother, sucking on a sumptuous sherbet lemon. Unfortunately for this grinning little child, unlike many of previous times, a rather tall male security guard had watched on in surprise and disgust. Spotted. The boy spun sharply. “Stop, you hooligan!” A hoarse, indignant voice boomed. The chase was on. Fear, anger and surprise. Bags of shopping fell from the innocent mother’s hands. Milk cartons unleashed chaos and then large boxes of frozen fish fingers and chips slammed against the, previously gleaming, floor. Sixteen eggs each smashed one after the other like dominoes, covering a women’s magazine the boy’s mum had been hoping to read when she got home and had a chance to put her feet up. Wafts of disgusting, putrid smells now clung to the mother’s fake Versace diamonte, bejewelled pink, handbag (Chavish tat to some, but to her a, cheap yet, adorable 30th birthday present). Raising her head, sweeping the flowing blonde locks from her eyes, the mother began to hunt for her mischievous son: embarrassed. Storming down the crisp aisle, meanwhile, all that the young thieving rascal could do was run, run and run! An ominous, rather speedy, figure was all he could see when he dared to look round. Danger pounded its violent feet so close to his heels, hammering down thuds of polished boots, the boy continued to zig-zag down aisle after aisle; Potatoes sent slamming to the ground laid all over the place. Mashed. “5 a Day – Helps you work and play.” A huge sign placed at the beginning of the fruit aisle displayed. ‘Riiiiiiiiiiiip!’ Shredded glossy paper blasted outwards by the momentum of the fugitive’s body. Green and red apples knocked from their industrial sized trays were trampled under the shoes of both the pursued and the pursuing. Crumbled. The dessert aisle was next to fall victim to the 8 year olds crime wave. Gateaux caught by swinging arms sent flying, spinning wildly, crashing into the wrinkled face of a shocked security guard, who was not so quick on his feet. Chocolate glooped down the rough surface of his weary face. It then turned a rather expensive white shirt, which had just been purchased by his employers, from dazzling white to cocoa brown. He was caked. They flooded the car park. A sea of blue lights, flashing, had suddenly washed onto the supermarkets enormous sprawl of grey tarmac and freshly painted road markings. The retail hive had been surrounded. Stranded. Leaping out the supermarket entrance, still smelling of sweet strawberries from his rather destructive dessert aisle run, the boy began to tire. While it was true he often played football with his father for hours on end for exercise, he was running on the developing legs of an eight year old. Legs like that could not run for long. Not long at all. “Stop or we will shoot!” Screamed, through a megaphone, one of many men dressed in black and white police uniforms. Two large iron pillars held up a section of the supermarkets roof, the boy launched himself across the open space between the modern glass door and them and gripped on to the left hand sided one. Looking around, he reasoned that he had two choices: a few feet away to the left a ladder left by a window cleaner rested against the green coated steel exterior of the soulless supermarket, but that would mean being visible in the rifle scope of every ruthlessly trained policeman that had their guns locked and loaded. Ready to kill. A few, sunset yellow, diggers were located in a fenced off construction area half way across the car park, still left over from when this branch of Tesco was constructed. Cars parked perfectly lay in neat rows between the boy and this building site. Trains of thought inside the boy’s mind slammed hard on the brakes. “Fire at will!” Clapped the booming voice of a police sergeant. A thunderous roar of bullets whooshed into the air and pelted towards the supermarket entrance. Glass shattered, shards dug deep into the boy’s heels. He was wearing shoes, but no amount of leather and plastic was going to stop the razor edged bits of window from penetrating his feet. “Owwwwwwwww!!” The boy’s voice echoed violently. He stumbled around in a small circle, trying desperately to avoid gunfire. Several bullets had smashed into the brick behind him. Stumbling downwards, the boy fell to his hands and feet. Turning slowly around he tried feebly to re-enter the supermarket. A familiar figure met his eyes. Constricted by pain, he opened his mouth to speak. The figure continued to advance. Helpless, the boy attempted to speak. “Mu...” Debris flew from the wall. Several rounds of sharp bullets sprayed the wall. Fear, anger and surprise. The three thoughts that coated the mother’s face once more. She had finally navigated the supermarket to find the entrance and found her son. But all hope was lost. Flesh tore. Metal pierced her skin. She shuddered, the whites of her eyes shone and she fell forwards. Despair filled her son’s heart. He clambered over to where she was about to fall. “I’m sorr... Mum I’m so sorry..Oh god...Please don’t die.” Wept the boy. No reply. Gently he softly placed his hand upon her face. Cold. It was as cold as the Arctic air. A lifeless bundle of bones, muscle and skin lay on the floor. Silent. Blood trickled from the mother’s head and stained her blonde hair like a river of death; it flowed along the gutter at the side of the silent road, which cut though the car park, and fell slowly through the iron grates of a rusty drain. Collapsed onto the floor beside the lifeless body, the boy sat with a blank face, bleached white with horror. A tear slid down his face as he drowned in shock. Smarties, now melted by the hot blood of a fatigued, lost soul, sat still in the boy’s right hand pocket. There was motionless trees, bitter air and a, fading, solemn sun in the sky. Blazing sirens exploded the dead silence and an ambulance halted abruptly beside mother and son. It didn’t matter though, for the mother was now dead, and no amount of treatment was ever going to cure such a horrific disease as guilt. So despite his outstretched, sweating, eager hand and the mouth-watering assortment of gastronomic delights in his palms. The vivid imagination of a little boy pricked his conscience causing him to rethink the situation and relinquish his solid grip on the Smarties. He closed the sweet jar lid firmly and strode away empty handed. A rather tall security guard smiled to himself with silent approval and continued his duty with a cheerful whistled tune.[/quote] [quote=In Human Hands by BaconDioxide] There’s nothing that particularly interests me on TV tonight. The Simpsons. ‘Friends’ reruns. Flicking through the channels, I notice there’s a documentary about possible deep sea life on Europa tomorrow night. Could be interesting. I bookmark it, then I continue watching the antics of Bart and his group of friends. The episode is humorous, but I only manage a chuckle or two. Guess I’m just not feeling it. It occurs to me that I’m watching a TV programme over fifty years old – perhaps it was funnier when it was contemporary? Somehow, I doubt it. Not much has changed in the way of television since the early 21st Century. With my attention rapidly waning, I move my brittle black hand to the remote sitting beside me. I clasp it, and for a brief instant, my hand involuntarily twitches. The remote is crushed, and my ears are greeted with the unpleasant sound of cracking plastic. Sigh. What a flimsy piece of shit. I retract my long, black mechanical arm and stand up to turn off the TV. Looks like I’ll have to get another remote. It wasn’t always like this. It’s a depressingly common story, really, only with an absurd twist. It was only 3 years ago that the accident happened. I was just another 23 year old with a desk job. My friends told me I was a good-hearted guy, if a little naive. I wasn’t a hugely social creature, but I had a girlfriend, Rosie, whom I adored, and my life was generally decent. One night, I was cruising along in a built up area at night, doing 30, simply minding my own business. And this guy just came at me. Out of fucking nowhere. Just some drunken idiot with a friend, I was told later. The last thing I remember was the ghastly stare of the headlights and the horrifying screech of brakes. When I woke up, groggy and immobile, I was in a hospital bed, and I could instantly tell there was something wrong. I felt the soft pressure of fabric over my eye. A bandage? I shifted slightly, and noticed something else was wrong. I couldn’t feel my arms. Only a tingling sensation from where they should be. Slowly I began to panic. My fucking arms were gone. Only stumps were left. I groaned as a miserable and inexorable feeling crept up from my stomach. Suddenly, I appreciated the freedom that two arms had afforded me. I would never be able to give a hug to anyone, never play an instrument, never drive a sodding car ever again. My independence was gone. I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried that night. I was told I would have to stay in hospital for weeks. In all that time, neither of my parents showed up. Rosie appeared, wept, and later told me she couldn’t devote her life to look after me. In retrospect, she probably wasn’t the best choice I could have made. My colleague Steve turned up too. He’s a rotund guy. Gave me a big bag of marshmallows. Everything was going fine until I pointed out that I couldn’t play the piano any more. He replied that I shouldn’t worry, as I could still play the foot drum, and chuckled. I told him to fuck off and get out. Regrettably, I haven’t seen him since. Weeks turned into months. I was wondering what the hell was going on, why they wouldn’t let me out of the place. Surely they would have some kind of prosthetic lined up for me? I remember seeing people in suits talking to my doctor. By this point I was seriously considering suicide, still wondering how to do it if I ever got out of here. You hear all these stories about how amputees are incredibly mentally strong, about how they all seem to have a huge amount of willpower and take things in their stride, so to speak; not so with me. I was just some asshole who lost both his arms and couldn’t deal with it. I was at the nadir of my despair. And then, in the midst of my deepest sorrow, They arrived. I was offered a deal. According to my medical background, I was perfect for a project of theirs, one which could restore the use of my arms and my right eye. I asked who They were, and if They were even qualified to carry out such an operation. They told me they worked for a company named Proteus. Suddenly, the people in suits made sense. Despite a brief initial feeling of betrayal, I eventually accepted. I mean, who wouldn’t? Would you honestly turn down the gift of being able to use both arms again, to be able to see with both eyes? I gave them permission to do whatever they wanted to my body, and I was transferred to their private clinic. I was to be a “proof of concept” – a test for their new protein bonding technique for synthetic limbs. Six months of drifting in and out of consciousness, like a paper boat caught in a gentle breeze. They put all sorts of shit inside me – drugs to prevent my immune system from rejecting the grafts, anaesthetics, and then the actual gear that would power my augmentations, resembling an oversized white laptop battery. I asked jokingly if this kind of stuff would be available on the NHS in a few years. The nurse simply smiled and put me to sleep again. Next came the actual cybernetics – the first thing that went in was a spindly brain implant, to control everything else. After I regained consciousness, I was aware of the luminous, ghostly blue imprints of a computerised display in my vision. Intricate phosphorescent readouts of my heartbeat and brainwaves. An impossible clock hung pendulously from the far right. Finally, the actual prosthetics came in. The night before they were attached, they rested on the table beside my bed in sealed bags. I admired their obsidian, metallic glint in the twilight of the clinic. Soon my body would be free again. It took three painful months to fully recover from the surgery, and to this day I still have to take a mild immunosuppressant to stop my body from rejecting the parts. But they worked. I remember the day when I finally managed to twitch my right index finger. I could see through the implanted eye they had given me – it could zoom, take pictures, and even record video like a digital camera. According to them, my recovery was ahead of schedule – slowly but surely, I began to use the mechanical limbs as if they were my own flesh and bone. I could pick up and hold a cup of water within a month, and within two I could slowly type on a laptop. I was given a lifelike pair of “fake skin” gloves, to hide the plastic and metal of my new limbs. They said my condition would only improve, and true to their word, I was released from the clinic at the end of the time period. As I should have expected, I received a lot of attention from the media as soon as I was released. They called me many things. Transhuman. Metahuman. Cyborg. From the Daily Mail, ‘inhuman freak’. I was hailed as a triumph of human bioengineering, and my heart-warming story of recovery was told by many a news outlet. The success of my treatment had proven the viability of an entirely new medical paradigm, and I could finally go back to living a normal life. My future was bright. Or so it seemed. A month after the initial hysteria, everything had calmed down again. Nobody was talking about me, and to be honest, I liked it that way – I wasn’t cut out for being a celebrity. For a year or so, everything proceeded as my old life once had, albeit without my girlfriend. I got a new job in a different office. I’ve taken to wearing tinted glasses pretty much all the time, as people tend to balk at the sight of my eye. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though – they seem to evoke a little sense of mystery in public. And my polymeric arms are amazingly resistant to damage. I’ve stopped wearing the skin gloves over them – those sleek ebony tools are practically works of art. I was getting used to the life of a cyborg, and things were finally starting to look up. Unfortunately, I just can’t seem to get a break. A year ago, doctors noticed that my liver was rapidly deteriorating due to the drugs I had been taking. That which gave me freedom was slowly ending me. Replacement of my liver was impossible, due to the position of the power source that I had inside me. Doctors gave me 4 years to live, at most. Nobody at Proteus had told me this would happen. By now, I was forgotten, simply a discarded, rusty element of a much larger machine. To them, my purpose had been served. When I got home, I just lay down on the sofa for a very long time, staring at the sullen white ceiling. It seemed to stare back into me. I fought back tears. It wasn’t fair that I was going to die in my twenties. I took a few weeks off work, just to stay inside and do nothing. I couldn’t be motivated to do anything other than the bare minimum needed to sustain me, and even that seemed pointless at times. Suicidal thoughts surfaced again. I took to walking around the city at night, again with sunglasses so that nobody could see my eye, and a simple black hoodie and baggy trousers. Buoyed by a fatalistic sense of recklessness, I began to stroll casually through darkened streets, itching for a fight, for someone to unload onto. Unbelievably, I was in luck. I soon spotted a group of youths harassing a girl. As I walked confidently towards them, I felt the combined stare of 8 or 9 teenagers, all boring into my person. Three or four years ago, I would be sheepishly backing away by now. Mental anguish does a lot to you. When you can’t stand the pain of something but it keeps happening, the person that survives is no longer you. They had left the girl, and I was ready to deliver my ultimatum with a smile on my face. “This little bitch thinks ‘e’s hard, don’t ‘e.” “Yeah man, we should fuck ‘im up good. Teach ‘im a fuckin’ lesson, am I right?” My smile breaks into a gleeful grin. “Come and get it then, you fucking pricks.” One of them breaks from the ranks, furious at my provocation. He brandishes a knife, which I grasp and beautifully extract from his hand. I follow it up with a cybernetically-enhanced punch to his gut. Now I see the true purpose of the brain implant. I grab his wrist and force him down to the ground. His fury has turned to abject terror. In a single deft movement, his wrist is crushed. He screams in anguish, fuelling my delight. I remove my sunglasses, allowing him to gaze into the depths of my hellish oculus. I revel in the brutal composites and subtle wires that complete me. I embrace the fantastic power of the machine inside me as I effortlessly pull him closer. “Get out of here. Tell your friends to get out of here. Or I will be back for you.” Terrified, he escapes, followed by his gang. The experience is exhilarating. Never before have I felt so truly free! Free to dispense with social norms, with strict procedure, with ethical restraint! I return to my apartment, buzzing with excitement. I will do this again. I have done it again, many times. As I turn the TV off, my mind begins to wander. I used to be such a nice kid. My favourite pastime was playing the piano, for fuck’s sake. What happened to me? The car crash happened. The cybernetics happened. But was it their fault? Was it their fault that I now live to assault and intimidate shady characters in the street? I pause for a second. I decide it doesn’t matter. I collect my hoodie and gloves as I leave my apartment, enjoying the feel of the chilling wind across my face and the driving gale of death at my back. The night is still young. [/quote] Well be posting the rest of the entries later, along with comments, and a special something straight from the judges.

Fuck yeah, pretty pleased with 3rd place. Reading through the top 2 stories, I can really see how I was beaten though. [editline]18:49[/editline] What about the Tara Gilesbie award?

In Human Hands is mine. Congratulations everyone!

Congrats to all who won and to BDA for winning overall :smile:

All right. Congrats to all you peeps mentioned in the winner post. Waiting to see my story in the bottom three stories submitted. :smug:

[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;23897994]All right. Congrats to all you peeps mentioned in the winner post. Waiting to see my story in the bottom three stories submitted. :smug:[/QUOTE] If you wrote "Return to Garrys Mod Nine," I thought it was :c00lbert:

[QUOTE=Nigey Nige;23898025]If you wrote "Return to Garrys Mod Nine," I thought it was :c00lbert:[/QUOTE] Nope. I wrote the drugs one. You know, the one probably at the bottom of your entries. :smug:

No-one is claiming their fabulous prizes :saddowns:

[QUOTE=Nigey Nige;23898501]No-one is claiming their fabulous prizes :saddowns:[/QUOTE] I am in the process of doing so. :3:

Well I've got places to be. BDA, send me a PM and I'll get your prize to you when I come back. Congratulations! :frogsiren:

yeah, mine was dumb shit

Well done to everyone that won! Judges did a good job of picking the winner, hope another contest is held soon!

The Sour Taste of Guilt is mine. Congratulations to all the winners!

Woohoo! Congrats everybody! Great job to all the other winners and honorable mention'ers, and better luck next time to those who didn't make it! Keep on trying! [img]http://washingtonbus.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/champagne.jpg?w=300&h=208[/img]