Discussion Thread -- September 2014 75-word Writing Challenge

It’s time for thank you’s, short listings and Congratulations!

First of all, a hearty round congratulations to Teresa for your victory and wonderful entry (see below) :D

My shortlist is as follows

Void
Victoria Silverwolf
Juliana
Chrispenycate
martin321
Teresa Edgerton

Each month I usually only manage to whittle down my favourites to two and then have a torturous time deciding which one. The fight this month was between Teresa and Juliana, but I just came down on Juliana’s side - the concept of a living room is chilling, and as a huge fan of House of Leaves, and movies like The Borderlands, I loved the idea here. You can see the common thread between these two stories, and I really liked the final line to Teresa’s story. It’s nice to have two interpretations, too; insanity, or monsters ;)

Thank you ratsy for the vote - I owe you an apology :eek:
Thank you Cat’s Cradle for the finalisting!
Thank you martin 321 for the shortlisting
Thank you Hermit the frog for making a note of mine
Thank you johnnyjet for the long listing

If anyone is interested; my empurpled entry was a bit of an experiment this month*, and I didn’t expect to get any short listings let alone a vote. I can’t really go into the reason behind me writing Trophy Wife without contravening forum rules (or at least, etiquette) and coming across like a troll, so I will send a PM to anyone who is interested.

Well done everyone.

pH
*and, I hope, atypical
 
A huge congratulations to Teresa for the win, not only for winning with a fine story, but for overcoming the near insurmountable hurdle of having me vote for her, which is nearly always a sign of impending doom.

A belated thanks to Parson, TDZ, BM and Ursa for the mentions/shortlistings.

I've done better this month than in a long while. A fluke or getting my mojo back?
 
Congrats to Teresa! :)

And thanks to Cat's Cradle for shortlisting me, glad you liked it!

Anyway, my story was about (red/green) colour blindness. I'm partially colour blind, and sometimes it's both frustrating (for me) and hilarious (for my friends) when I can't tell two colours one from another. :D
 
The Judge said:
This is annoying. Is it a quote, or your own? I feel I should know it from somewhere!
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No, it was my own. (Or at least I think it was my own!)

After I wrote my story and looked through the others, I was afraid it was a little too close to Juliana's -- which I voted for -- but I really had no other inspirations, and I could only hope they were different enough.

Since I am claustrophobic, Juliana's story really struck a chord with me.
 
Many thanks to the folks who placed me on their lists.

This may be obvious, but my entry was based on a double meaning of the word "sublimation" -- either the changing of a solid to a gas (or the other way around) without becoming a liquid, or the protagonist's transfer of her need for love to an inanimate object. (Hence the choice of the name "Amanda" = "worthy of being loved."
 
holland said:
Congrats to Teresa! :)

And thanks to Cat's Cradle for shortlisting me, glad you liked it!

Anyway, my story was about (red/green) colour blindness. I'm partially colour blind, and sometimes it's both frustrating (for me) and hilarious (for my friends) when I can't tell two colours one from another. :D
Click to expand...

Ah! That's what it was about! And here's me trying to get my head around traffic lights of some kind.
 
I got that, holland! The red/green thing gave it away for me (although I can see now that I could have been confused by traffic lights), but then again, I didn't follow the hunger connection at the end. I saw it as a color-blindness test, one of those circles with all the little dots, which may not have been right, but I laughed at the idea of all the little dots rearranging themselves when he wasn't looking. :D
 
Thank you very much, Phyre!
Remedy, sorry to hear about your duck; beautiful tribute, though.

As for mine, as it's almost October and a suitably creepy time of year, I'll explain. When we moved to Brazil (I was 8) we went to live in a very odd house. After a couple of years, my younger brother asked to switch rooms with me, as he wanted to be closer to my parent's room. I said yes and moved to his larger room at the front of the large (by my young English standards) house.

It was a very strange room. For months nothing would happen, and then would come a night when the room felt like a living thing. There was a malevolence there, an awareness of something real surrounding me. Those were the nights my light stayed on and I read until morning, afraid to close my eyes.

My mother had always told me I was an imaginative child, so I never talked about the Room, thinking it was just my fancy. Years later, in my early 20's, my parents sold the house. One day, over dinner in the new house, I joked about the haunted Room. My brother couldn't believe it. He'd felt exactly the same, but never talked about it. We compared notes, and it all matched up.

We later found out that the previous owners had a suicidally-depressed daughter. Did the Room absorb all her negative thoughts and relay them to us? Or did the Room itself drive her to the brink of death? We'll never know.
 
Supernatural, Juliana?


Well, nothing I believe in. And yet, I still get creeped out by so many things in media. Particularly anything moving that shouldn't. Not just any old thing, but those in image of humans-dolls, mannequins, statues. And not just sliding about like being pushed, but walking and fluidly moving on their own.


Otherwise, it's clowns. Most other stuff I have no issue with.
 
Ugh, Karn, creepy dolls, yes.

Don't know if there really was anything supernatural going on with that bedroom, or some rational explanation, but I never went back to check. :D
I'm a complete wuss with creepy stuff. Even the Gremlins movie scared me! (It was the last scene, when they tell you to be careful if you hear a noise at night).
 
Teresa Edgerton said:
Someone asked a few pages back what was the line that came into my mind and generated a story. It was: I have always been persecuted by inanimate things.
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That question came from me and that is not the line I would have guessed. The line I thought might well have been the inspiration was the last one: "In the dark something laughs."

Congratulations! I've said it before that was one Cracker Jack of a story.
 
TheDustyZebra said:
I got that, holland! The red/green thing gave it away for me (although I can see now that I could have been confused by traffic lights), but then again, I didn't follow the hunger connection at the end. I saw it as a color-blindness test, one of those circles with all the little dots, which may not have been right, but I laughed at the idea of all the little dots rearranging themselves when he wasn't looking. :D
Click to expand...

Yep, I was having that exact test in my ming while writing - Ishihara test.

The hunger thing was pretty random, I got hungry trying to figure out how to wrap up the story, so yeah :D

Btw, Juliana, that was creepy as hell :eek:
 
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