April 2011 SEVENTY-FIVE WORD CHALLENGE -- A Major Victory for Ursa!

[The Judge]

RULES:


Write a story inspired by the chosen theme in no more than 75 words

One entry per person

All stories Copyright 2011 by their respective authors, who grant the Chronicles Network the non-exclusive right to publish them here.

The complete rules can be found at http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/531184-rules-for-the-writing-challenges.html




Contest ends at 11:59 pm GMT, April 23 2011
Voting Ends at 11:59 pm GMT, April 28 2011


You do not have to submit a story in order to vote -- in fact, we encourage all Chrons members to take part in choosing a winner


The Magnificent Prize:

The Dignified Congratulations/Groveling Admiration of Your Peers
and the privilege of choosing next month's theme or genre




This month's genre is:

Paranormal Romance


and the theme is:


... happy ever after... ?


Good luck! (And keep it clean...)
​

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

How Do YOU Want To Go?​

Jana felt a chill in her bedroom. She pulled the covers up around her but it didn't help.
She stared off across the room at the wall, the floorboards creaking under nonexistent weight.

She felt a kiss and she yelped, screaming. “WHO'S THERE!?!”

There was no answer, and no entity appeared. Instead, her room set on fire. She let out one scream before the intense heat and smoke inhalation took her life.

 

[paranoid marvin]

A Ballad of Love Unrequited

In times long past before the war
I loved a man so grim
And even though the years have flown
I sit and think of him

My heart his cruel smile destroyed
When I entreated him
To stop and think and pause awhile
'Fore he enforced his whim

In times long past before the war
I loved a man so grim
He rode a horse so pale in hue
And Hell came after him

 

[Mouse]

Stop Being Dandy

I have ridden far, battled great dragons. I am battered, yet my hair remains miraculously shiny. I come here to seek out my beloved and lo! What do I see?

Her corpse. Her fingers nibbled by mice. And you! You stand there with a smirk on your face.

Cruel dwarf, I will strike you down!

Unless… nay! I cannot live without my love. I will turn my blade upon myself. Spectral lovers. Snow, and me.

 

[Hex]

Committed

Lips tingling from the cold kiss, she watches him transform. When he opens his eyes they are - appropriately - as green as frogs.

"Oooooooh! We must tell Daddy! The dress by... Alexander McQueen, I think, or maybe Fairy Fashions. A bodice of pearls! And - heehee - a frog theme! Frog decorations, frog favours - oh! Frog HATS!"

Clapping her hands, she turns to him.

He isn't there.

"Prince?"

A splash from the depths of the well. Then, silence.

 

[HareBrain]

I Married Cthulhu


‘That is not dead which can eternal lie,’ he often says of our sex-life. And in the beginning, our lovemaking was tentacular. But ancient beings come with ancient attitudes. I have to clean, though R’lyeh’s impossible geometry makes vacuuming a chore. And his clothes! Too gargantuan for Calvins, he still wears the underpants he brought from Beyond Space.

But it’s hard not to love someone with stars in his eyes. I can change him.

 

[Talysia]

Love unto death, and...

As his aged body failed him, there she was, waiting.

He'd loved her ever since he was young, and yet they had never touched. Whenever he’d introduced her, people refused to acknowledge her and felt cold in her presence, so he had kept their love secret. A ghost? No, she was real. That was all he needed to know.

A faint warmth touched his limp hand, and she smiled at him. Finally, they were together.

 

[Perpetual Man]

Titles Are Just Words, Mother is Forever...

There is a cold spot at the end of the Abbey where she stands alone and watches her eldest son pledge his wedding vows to his bride.

She knows they are in love, that they do this from the heart, not for archaic rules of another time. She so wants them to have their fairy tale.

Unlike herself, denied that happy ending in the wreckage of a car, in those tunnels beneath Paris years ago.

 

[alchemist]

The quality of mercy...


She had elevated him from his own realm, and shown him the universe. Under a hundred eldritch moons, she gifted him unearthly pleasures no mortal man should taste.

Time flowed, a relentless tide. She was eternally young, but the greying of his hair matched that of his spirit. He remained oblivious.

She had one last gift.

Tenderly, she kissed his lips, and eased the blade into his heart, so that he might be free again.

 

[mygoditsraining]

Thomas the Rhymer

Seven years was the price of the fairy Queen’s kiss, and Thomas was glad to pay it.
Over the years, the warmth of his songs thawed her ice-cold heart.

“Wait for my sign,” she said, returning him to Ercildourne.

At midsummer, she sent two messengers to call him to her - a milk-white hart and a milk-white hind.

A forester shot the pair at the forest’s edge;

The Rhymer’s Feast was legend.

 

[Gary Compton]

Choo Choo Love


Heart racing, I ran through the moonlit forest. A ghostly figure flitted between the trees.

‘God save me,’ I begged.

Stumbling on a track; I followed glinting steel. Whisperings of a broken heart tormented me.

‘Leave me alone,’ I screamed to the man I’d once loved.

A thunderous roar approached.

Whap!

Two worlds merged and a vortex opened; swirling ectoplasmic energies of a nightmare beckoned.

‘Welcome to Hell baby,’ he said, eyes red and putrid.

 

[Demonomania]

Like The Lepers



Crippled…

The word used to describe the very meat of his soul; his heart’s inability to love out with death. A word becoming literal, mutilating his form to that of a gnarled tree parched of life’s balmy moisture. Often, during nights of strangled silence, he runs his ruined hands (claws) through the ethereal form of her dress - the faint smoke that makes up her tears caressing his desiccated form that is unable to die.

 

[crystal haven]

Where the flowers bloom

Amongst the flowers she walks.
Bloodstained dress, now fading.
Raped. Murdered.
She bends to kiss a flower of red, hands caressing,
And gazes out across the fields.
Where are you, my love?
The battle has long ended.

In uniform of waning red, he waits.
She followed the drum.
Flowers sway in a gentle breeze,
A kiss upon his cheek: a memory?
I will find you, my love.
I will never leave this place, alone.

 

[Arkose]

Mistakes


He gazed at her, worlds away.


‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t running away this time, I loved you deeply.’


‘I forgot your gift; I had to retrieve it while you slept.’


‘Even when you turned into a serpent, like Kiyohime, I never stopped loving you.’


Her body lost color as blood seeped from her wound.


The knife still in her chest, she collapsed on his dead body holding a ring in his outstretched hand.

 

[Boneman]

Cold-Hearted Love​

We’re programmed to make women love us.

Their men fight on distant planets. Prime Directive means we can’t join them.

We take their men’s looks, their laugh, their memories, and comfort women in their loneliness.

She was different. The way she sighed, the line of her neck, the hands that held me close.

She wanted me.

Still, I will be deprogrammed.

I am glad. I was better than him.

I loved her.

But he returned.

 

[No One]

Ghost in the Machine

The room was much like the world, ended centuries ago. Darkness was the gentle mother that hid the true extent of destruction and decay. Except for them.

Two white lights, blinking between two machines, the echo of lost billions passing between them. There were no words, but much was said and heard and understood and felt.

One blink had said, “I’m alive.”

The other, “I’m afraid.”

Blink, “I’m here.”

Blink, “I’m happy.”

Blink. Blink. Blink.

 

[Anne Martin]

Two

an aching heart
a ghostly kiss
unearthly caresses
beating ceases

joy in a soul released
bliss
two entwined as one
for eternity immortal

 

[Brev]

Angels never lie:


I fall back against the door, unable to control my smile.
Laughing. What a night!
Climbing the stairs, I flush at the thought of silly conversations, reliving every word, every accompanying glance.
Remembering the feel of his lips, I giggle.


I should get some sleep, but I need to know!


My chest tightens as I shuffle the deck.
Significator placed, I turn the first card.
Head shaking, I lay another, then another.
My smile vanishes.

 

[digs]

In Ordinary Things

"Where's Grandma now?" I once asked Granddad.

"I don't believe in that spiritual crap," he'd said. "She's gone for good."

But he grew lilies for her and kissed her photograph. He went to their cafe and sat at their table.

Mum thought he'd gone mad with grief.

I only thought there was a magic to it: how he tended that solitary love for fifteen years afterward, always knowing she was forever out of reach.

 

[Aun Doorback]

To dream of Asenath


Each night Joe dreamed. Nepenthe was his liquor.
Three thousand years ago they had taken the pact of eternal bliss.
Urine and cobra venom mixed - Bittersweet.
‘I’m tired’ She murmured, her voice tinged with sadness.
He shifted uncomfortably, hot under the sheets, reaching out to touch her one more time. ‘Don’t go’
‘I never leave’, she said.
‘I love you’, he whispered, but his fingers only grasped the empty bed next to him.