Re: Discussion AUGUST 75 Word Writing Challenge
Perp - Not sure that this was the story that I should have gone with, but I like it. The more I think about it though, some of the others were more suited to the theme.
Anne Martin - I liked this one, there seemed to be a nice undercurrent of humour - at least it amused me. I felt that it was a jinxed play, and an actor was trying to stop the jinx happening by having the play closed, even though he was probably instigating the jinx himself. Good fun.
Nixie - Someone else mentioned that this reminded them of the devil playing the fiddle (for me it was the song The Devil Went Down to Georgia, but in this case mixed with the Pied Piper. It deepens that though, with no specific player on the instrument, making it haunting, strange and unsettling. Great story.
Quokka - This story reminded me slightly of one of my own I rejected. Of course being a father with a youngster anything with children hits home. I sit now looking at the monitor waiting with trepidation and fear. What is that cuddly duck up to. Excellent.
TDZ - This one was fun, excellent and a subtle unspoken horror, rather it is what it hints at that feed the tale. There might be nothing in it. The wife might be happily working in the kitchen, or gone shopping, or staying with friends or she might be hidden away in a pumpkin patch.
Deathfrommassive - A twist on selling your soul to the devil. Like the previous story a lot of the reasons why this works comes from what is left unsaid. The uncertainty ratchets up the uneasiness of what you are reading. Are they aware of what they are doing? Are they doing it on purpose or playing? Is something going to come of it. Another brilliant entry.
alchemist - A great imaginative piece. It starts of as though we are part of any generic horror movie, but it switches into something else, unexpectedly. No longer scary for the reader it become disconcerting for the characters... with a superb pay off.
Stormfeather - As always from SF's poems the rhyming is absolutely brilliant, and the story running through it flows wonderfully. It feels like a whole epic slipped into 75 words. There is a lot more going on than I would have thought possible. Brilliant.
No-One - There is something so innocent in listening to children at pay that it easy to forget just how terrifying some of the stories they come up with can be. No-One captures that almost precisely here, with a beautifully presented tale, that sound horrific until it is revealed that it is only a child at play, that makes it all the more terrifying.
Glen - Halloween appears and brings a scary clown with it.. Two staples of horror brought together in a way that works well. The horror here is not in the story itself, but rather in the ending and what happens next. I don't think this clown will be making animals from balloons. Well not from balloons anyway.
I'm glad somebody got the reference, anyway -- it's always a hazard when you have to depend on everyone's knowledge of a particular thing.
