Culhwch
Lost Boy
For the first time in its brief history, we have need of a tie-breaker to decide the winner of the 300 Word Challenge. We've also had the first four-way tie in the history of the challenges. It has been an extraordinary month in the 300 Worder!
Congratulations to all entrants, and especially to those four - The Spurring Platty, alchemist, TheDustyZebra and mosaix - who stood above all other comers.
The rules for the tie-break are simple:
Please keep comments to the Discussion thread -- any comments posted here will be moved.
Congratulations to all entrants, and especially to those four - The Spurring Platty, alchemist, TheDustyZebra and mosaix - who stood above all other comers.
The rules for the tie-break are simple:
Each member has only one vote to cast
No member may vote for his or her own story
The poll will close at 11.59pm GMT on Sunday, 20 November, 2011
Please keep comments to the Discussion thread -- any comments posted here will be moved.
And now for the stories, in the order of posting:
*****
One Dastardly Plan
by The Spurring Platty
by The Spurring Platty
This is madness. Sheer madness!!
Oh do be quiet. The mothership wouldn’t have sent us into these hosts unless we had a minimum 70% chance of success. And we could have made out much worse. We have fangs. FANGS! And they come with poison. Not to mention eight appendages. We can even produce flexible steel out our butts. You have to admit that is pretty cool.
It would be if things would stop getting stuck to it.
I think we lucked out. This could be the perfect organism for planetary subjugation.
Our people will hail us as heroes.
Our people will hail us as heroes.
Well I heard over my comm implant some groups get to try out raptors. That has to be a possibility. Beaks and claws are to die for. And flying! All I can do is dangle in the wind from my butt cable. And it’s not like we figured out how the poison actually works.
But look what we are on! It turned this biped into stone. And it was one with wings. That’s powerful stuff. We were lucky to get these two specimens. You could have been a penguin that can’t fly, or a platypus (**shudders**).
We haven’t figured out how to turn anything to stone yet. All we’ve managed to do is liquefy some bugs.
There were tasty though, once we figured out how to slurp the stuff out with our fangs. They make perfect straws. Hey, there’s that chubby kid again!
Why do you think he keeps coming back to the cemetery every night?
I think it’s that stuff he likes to smoke. And he did say something to his friends about “getting stoned”.
Well let’s go bite him and see if it works.
But what if it doesn’t?
Then tonight, we shall dine like conquerors.
*****
Cast a cold eye
by alchemist
by alchemist
Jim cleared the snow from the image on her headstone -- long red hair swept down over her shoulders, flowing over her cuddly elephant on Christmas morning. The anger threatened to break through again but he held firm, concentrating on what he had to do. He pulled wilted flowers out of their vase and lifted the ceramic butterfly, a crack running along its length. He could fix that -- it was all he could do for her now.
Jim turned, ready to run, when he looked at her photo. No more Christmasses, no more waving goodbye in the morning, no more bedtime hugs and "Night, Daddy."
And that was it -- his defences were breached. A silent scream rose up and it was all he could do to keep from crying out. Pain and overwhelming loss crumbled what little psychological walls remained. He staggered away in a daze, arms wrapped around flowers and butterfly as if it was all that remained, desperate to get to his car and escape.
The squeal of brakes snapped his attention back. For a brief moment, he imagined the black truck as a carriage sent to take him to her. But it stopped just feet away and the ashen-faced driver jumped down from the cab. He ran to the back of the truck and peered underneath.
"Where is she?" he pleaded.
"Who?"
"The girl, with the red hair. She was on the road and I couldn't stop in time, but...she's gone. I must have missed her."
"Lucky you," Jim said.
"You and me both." Relief crept over the driver's face. "If I hadn't braked then, I'd have hit you."
Jim's jaw dropped. Red hair. He stumbled towards the car, ignoring the driver's concern. Something tickled his clenched fist. He opened it and the butterfly flew away.
*****
To Accept with Serenity
by TheDustyZebra
by TheDustyZebra
The pictures in our hallway trace the lifetime of our angel; cherub-cheeked baby, laughing little girl, impish smile in school pictures -- one, two, three, but no more. The last picture tells a tale we don't repeat to anyone, ever.
Grace disappeared on her 8th birthday, on vacation in France. She went to bed after her party and simply vanished. Months of endless nightmare followed: fruitless searching, skeptical and then downright hostile interrogations in a language we had quickly to master, and in the end, no trace. No Grace.
When the call came, my wife sent me to talk to the old man; she'd had more than she could take of false hopes.
I met him at the specified church, noting that he had failed to mention the adjacent graveyard.
“I know where your Grace is,” he'd said, but the tale he spun was ludicrous, impossible.
“I've lived here all my life; I've seen things.”
He showed me the statues -- hundreds of years old, all, yet this one over here appeared only a dozen years ago, and that one just a few years before it. He showed me pictures. Pictures of the graveyard over the years, and pictures of missing children, clipped from newspapers.
“But that's ridiculous,” I said. “How could that be?”
And then he took me to the last statue. My angel Grace's sweet face, there in that stone monument at the edge of a cemetery in France.
“But this statue is ancient, just look at it!” Reason warred with emotion in my heart.
“Well, yes -- and no. It's been here for about 200 years. But it disappeared for years, and only recently reappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“This angel was gone for eight years. Well, 8 years and 9 months, to be precise.”
*****
When A Restraining Order Just Isn't Enough...
by mosaix
by mosaix
Holding the cigarette with painful, arthritic fingers he takes one last pull before dropping it to the carpet and crushing it under foot. Through his window he watches as the gang of youths and their football get closer.
Behind him a small electric fire barely warms the room. In one corner a pile of old newspapers, in another empty sherry bottles. On a table, amongst unwashed plates and glasses, a black cat sniffs at an empty fish can.
They’re outside now and, just as he knew they would, start kicking the ball hard against his fence, watching and waiting for a reaction. He does nothing. Harder, still nothing. Finally the ball flies into his unkempt garden breaking a small, concrete pond ornament – a winged statue.
Again he does nothing but stand and watch as his main tormentor, the one with protruding ears, kicks open his gate, collects the ball, makes an obscene gesture and spits at his door on the way out. The others stand and jeer.
He scrapes with a thumbnail at some spilt food on his sweater and ponders, once again, a solution to his problem.
He turns slowly, settles into a chair, takes up a dusty black book and starts flicking through the pages.
***
Again he watches from the window. Knots of neighbours stand at gates looking up and down the street, talking quietly. Others watch from behind twitching curtains. A police car is parked further down and opposite two policemen, one taking notes, talk to a couple on their doorstep.
His looks over to where his new statue stands, it has particularly protruding ears.
On the floor his cat, with a single paw, holds open the black book at the start of a new chapter, the heading prominent in gothic script – Cast In Stone.
