JUNE 2010 Writing Challenge -- HareBrain wins by a landslide!

[BookStop]

The Hunt

Jebediah’s breath passed silently over his lips; his motions were slow and deliberate. Deer were easy pickings during mating season.

His grin cocked to one side with malicious intent; his gun barrel cocked to the other.

His finger squeezed and the shot fractured the air, hitting its target.

Jeb lay bleeding, his hands now hooves as Diana stepped from the foliage addressing her companion.

“I told you humans were easy pickings during deer mating season.”

 

[The Judge]

What Price Thy Virginity Now?


Defying the god, she flees his lust.
Aroused, he pursues, bent on conquest, possession.
Prayers – and her father answers. Not sanctuary: metamorphosis, change.
Her arms branch, leaf; her feet root, earthed. Bark on her breast, on her lips.
No more breath, no more heartbeat. Only her shining beauty remains.
Ever unravished. Ever imprisoned.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Teddy

"Drink up, Fuff!"
Hot, steaming air was poured into the cup before me. My arms, perpetually held aloft, lay on either side of the saucer.

Later, chubby hands clutched tight, buried in soft fur. Lips, with the taint of chocolate, pressed against my hard, button nose.

"Goodnight, sweetheart."
"Fuff!"
Gently, I am interred into outstretched arms.

Steady breaths soon flopped my ear back and forth. From under velvet paws slid claws.

 

[Jay2645]

The Fairy and the Bee

“I wish I could be a caterpillar,” said a bee from a flower leaf, “They have it easy.”
Just then, a beautiful fairy appeared and granted his wish. The bee was stunned. “This is awesome!” he cried.
Then a bird spotted him, nearly making the bee her dinner.
“Fairy, I wish I was a scorpion!” cried the terrified bee.
The fairy appeared once again and squashed the lowly bee, as he bugged her too much.

 

[digs]

Runt

The next full moon, Sammy watched from the window. He ached with the effort of standing, his tears fever-hot on icy skin.

From houses along the street the children streamed. They strode, shifted, loped over snow, shrill cries gaining haunting timbre. They howled exultantly, invitingly. Come! Hunt!

Only Beth remembered. She waved farewell, dark eyes sad above her tawny muzzle. Then hand became paw, and she too was gone.

Sammy, too weak to change, remained.

 

[HareBrain]

Big City, Bright Light


Gregor Cockroach woke one morning transformed into a human being.

At last. My lowly birth will no longer hold me back.

His mother’s antennae quivered in distress. Gregor sneered.

‘There’s nothing good about being a cockroach! You'll not see me again.’

He went out to join his fellow humans, to tread his ambitious road to fame.

The streets were in panic. A searing flash, a mushroom cloud.

‘Oh,’ he sought the apposite human word, ‘knickers.’

 

[chopper]

The Long Awaited Apotheosis of Arthur James Seymour III



The world fades. He climbs, exultant, and weaves another from nothing.

“Yes! I've done it! I'm immortal – a god! All life is mine to command!”

Incorporeal, he raises an entire civilisation to venerate him. And then destroys it. All in the space of a minute.

His fellow Ascended – a new pantheon – watch, unimpressed.

“Third one this week,” one says in passing.

“He'll soon calm down,” another notes. “This ain't all it's cracked up to be.”

 

[Culhwch]

Those Left Behind

He recalled the father of his youth. This was not that man. Since his sister’s death, their father had withered, inside and out. Like a rose come the frost.

‘Sire? You need to—’

The prince raised a hand, silencing the Lord Marshall. He knew the man chafed at taking orders from a boy.

Too bad. If my father won’t rule…

‘Call the banners.’ His voice cut like new-forged steel. ‘We go to war.’

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Pest Control​

We emerge and test our wings; around us devastation; four survived.
We know our task. We must be avenged. Fly; up, higher, we mate; death.

We emerge; we are thousands; we remember; we mate; death.

We emerge; we are millions; we remember; we know our enemy. There is mating; death.

We emerge; we are billions, our stings are sharp.

Where are the white maggots that walk and spray death?

They will pay.

 

[Boneman]

One of 'em​

The first wave was released. Thousands of us. More waves followed.

The way had been prepared so we surged forward. It had worked before.

No weapons. Numbers were the only defence we had.

Thousands died, but I reached the target. It was surrounded by my fellows, attacking in a frenzy.

Our species depended on one of us succeeding. I joined them. Suddenly my head slipped through. I had made it!

I merged with the ovum.

 

[Lenny]

I was tempted to go with the trials and tribulations of a square at the hands of a sadistic Maths student, but you've got this instead; graph transformations aren't in the realm of SFF, I'm afraid.

No-one Knows...

Google’s introduction of Virtual Reality browsing changed the world. It opened the doors to the Internet for anyone – the rich, the poor, even the people on the moon! Everyone.

He liked to spend his time chasing hackers through the pipes at the heart of the digital world. Cornered, like mice, they always bowed down when he displayed his awesome…

A rattling… someone calling his name… the smell of meat…

Log off, shut down.

“Mrow”.

 

[reiver33]

Think of this as flight recorder chatter...


Operation Bowman

“The planet looks like its writhing.”

“That’s not a useful description. Status?”

“Sorry. Ah, atmospheric density is at ninety-eight percent of anticipated compression threshold.”

“I have proto-combustion indicators in the gas giant core.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Talk to me, people!”

“It’s right on top of us, right on our escape route!”

“I’ll check the aft viewport. I’m not aborting the mission because of some sensor ghost...”

“Sir?”

"My God, it's full of stars!"

 

[onebigpotato]

Elevator


‘You’ll cure disease’
‘You’ll end famine’
‘You’ll wage wars’ they said.

The first non silicon chip, alone I processed more information in an instant than humanity had it all its existence. I’d seen it all, from the battle grounds of Plenthenar A to what could loosely be described as the sexual act between a human male and a B’Xaxian sub-terrestrial Sniggle Hog.

Where did it get me?

Technically surpassed.

“Level 3 – Cosmetics and undergarments.”

 

[vector7]

Documents Regarding Planet 6 [To Be Disposed]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Flight SRC-242
LAST KNOWN TRANSMISSION
From: Lt. Pierre

***Transmission Begins***​

Black skies. Orange fires. The green trees transformed to ash. Lakes turned to murky waters of death. Black rivers of tar flowing like rivers and sinister skies that rains coal. It is a planet beset by the rage of men. I wish we hadn’t done it. I wish I hadn’t come here…Oh Dieu! …Nous purifier de nos péchés... Save me.

***Transmission Ends***​

Confirmation: Planet Dead

 

[Moonbat]

Wonderful Wonderings

So fleeting is the trigger and impossible to pinpoint, akin to the initial raindrop formed in a cloud. Soon thousands of internal signals are flooding through dendrite chasms.
Those around me chase ghostly opinions through the valleys and folds of this grey world, creating and weighting preferences.
I’m joined along the axon by ten thousand others; we charge across the synapses together, an army invading the neuron.

‘Hmmm’ ponders Johan ‘Can a caterpillar tap-dance?’

 

[ColdBurn]

The Ghost of the Ghetto

"All is ready, Ezrah?" Adara panted. Think of Raisel, of the life stirring within her.
"Yes, Rabbi. I placed the words as you said."
Boots in the corridor, slamming doors. This was it. This journey to hell, the old manuscript, Raisel. Redemption. Freedom. Vengeance.
"Do it, then. Now!"
Ezra's blade sank deep. The young man gasped, his last prayer filling the dirty little room. On the floor below, his black, earthen echo screamed to life.

 

[Axiom]

Grounded

She stood, tormented. Her uncontrolled visions were made reality.
"ENOUGH!"
Composed skies and furious storms, flooded marshes and frightening mountains, daemons and angels, light and dark, all rapidly materialising in front of her.
Fingers on temples, her futile attempts to focus aggravated her mental anguish. Worlds transformed before her yet she was powerless to stop it.
"Please... Stop."
...
"Did you say something?"
The worlds stopped. There was just him. It was always just him.

 

[StormFeather]

Chosen​

The darkness had held him for a long time now. Confined. Amid his fellows, he is patient, calm. It’s his nature.

Today he is brought into the light, ready to be reborn.

A sudden rush of air. His head makes harsh contact with a rough, rasping surface.

A spark ignites in a flare of fiery incandescence. He perishes in the flame.

The candles lit, the lights are dimmed

‘Happy Birthday to you . . .’

 

[CyBeR]

New teeth apples

There is this tree in that garden over there. It grows apples eerie red, of magnificent firmness.
On each year, only for a few days at a time, it brings all the children of the village near it. It offers one apple to each and sends them on their merry way.
And each year so, as clockwork, first teeth surrender without fight to the wonderful fruit.
And thus, childhood dies a little more.

 

[Quokka]

Einstein’s Sanity



She knew it wasn’t going to work. It hadn’t yesterday, it hadn’t ever, and yet the order kept coming. She had been ordered and she had done it, but now pain in the pursuit of answers had become pain in the postponement of questions.

So, putting down her syringe and her compliance, she tried to figure out how to get one very strange person away from people who, moments ago, had been on her side.