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I know we always get to see the chosen winner for the prompt each week, but part of the fun is seeing what different people did for the same thing.
Let’s post our entries that didn’t win below!
Correct me and take this down if I’m committing treason. 😛
(no entries that are still being judged, please. Only rounds that are already over.)Well… *glances around uneasily, shifting dark eyes from shadow to shadow* you haven’t been taken down yet… so… here goes.
‘They struck off his chains at the entrance to the Vault, and throwing him into the darkness slammed and barred the doors behind him. Leaping up, he threw himself against them, but to no avail.
Sliding to the floor with a groan, he bowed his head into his hands.
He had insisted upon his innocence— but they had shamed him before all gathered to witness the judgment… and before Morina.
He staggered to his feet and stood unsteadily. What would she think, to find him lying in the dark, self-pitying and terrified to go on?
Turning, he fixed his eyes on the far end of the chamber.
The portals stood there— glowing with strange phantasmal lights, while shreds of colored mist, vivid as poison, seeped from beneath their thresholds.
He took a deep breath and started forward. He must fulfill his punishment. That only would appease their wrath.
Halting before the middlemost portal, he stood there while venomous golden mists poured over him with a noisome stench and rumored whispers of evil. Vague, amorphous forms shone through the pulsing lights, but otherwise all was formless.
Closing his eyes and driven solely by the knowledge that this was the only way, he stepped forward across the threshold.
His last memory was of the vault vanishing into nothingness behind him, and his last thought was for Morina.’This was for the fantastic one that had all the different worlds in it— and let me just say right now, the person who won that one is a triple genius. That last line completely gave me the chills.
My answer for that prompt is actually pretty typical— I’m not just saying that either. I can’t think up amazingly clever things, at least not quickly enough to write it out in the span of a week.
But… I’ve posted it anyway, so people can laugh at it in comparison to the Einstein of writers who won. And let me give that gentleman a hand— *applauds, cheers* I don’t even remember his name, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget his answer to that prompt. It was amazing.
Cool! That’s a good one, Kate! 🙂 Agreed, that was a well deserved win by whoever-that-was. I had too many ideas for that one and wasn’t able to get past the obvious. I always try and get it to the point where it looks like the picture has been taken exclusively for my story, and I wasn’t getting it from that one. 😛
Did you enter any of the other ones?Yup— the one you won, and let me say also you did great with that. I’ll post it, if you want.
‘His eyes behind their horn-rimmed glasses roved restlessly over the sea of faces before him— skeptical faces, he realized with a shock. They did not believe him. But then, why should they? There was no reason to abandon the narrow, logical world of the Space Station to which they had held so long.
His lips curved in a little smile, half scornful, half amused.
It was their loss. They could sit here in glaring white light and laugh at him, secure in their world of patterns, numbers, and set formulas, if they wanted. He had been one of them. He could not grudge them their smug security.
But the contrast! The difference between the spotless auditorium and the pulsing blue lights with the wheeling stars of night in Thar Gemini! The smell of hot metal and paint against the wild and heady perfumes of the Triangulum flowers in their glades beneath the Delphinus Mountains! Who had known that there could be such beauty beyond the confines of the known universe?
But they could cling to their world, if they wanted. It pleased them.
He turned from the lectern, taking up his papers and stepping off the stage. But he smiled as he did so. They were such pitiable fools.
No disbelief or scorn could ever take from him anything he had once seen and known.’That’s a good tip about waiting until it’s exclusively your story. I’ll have to remember that.
Thanks. 🙂 Yours is a nice take on it, too. The thing I was avoiding doing with that was making an evolution/creation argument. I thought everyone would jump on that.
Yeah, with that tip, it’s a lot in explaining the details. Find the question of the picture and give an answer. Like, my question with that one was “How do the lines go up that high? Could anyone have really drawn that?” My given answer was “No. It’s a wormhole.” XP
I forgot a detail in this week’s prompt, though. It’s a woman’s hair around the edge, hinting that a lady is holding it. Mine was a guy.See that’s funny— I didn’t even think of evolution vs. creation. 😀
I’ve not done one for this week’s prompt yet. I’m working on it, and I don’t know that I’ll be able to come up with something original enough to embarrass myself by submitting…
It seems like everyone got the same basic idea with that bizarre platform in the black mist with the radiant planets surrounding the disc. I had noticed that the little red guy seemed to have a heroic look. I had the idea that if you jumped into one of those planet pictures you would be transported to it. I was imagining that the little red hero must be chasing some other guy who had jumped through one of the pictures. That must have left the little red guy wondering which one he took. It was fun to think about but I never got around to solidifying my idea. I did do one for the swirling black board though. It’s a bit overdramatized, but perhaps that is good. It’s kinda funny actually because I have no problem understanding math. I guess I just wanted to rant against the textbook’s lack of integration.
I could see him clearly. We all could. The seats ascended higher with each progressive row forming an auditorium where he was eminent, and us unhidden from his gaze.
Scratch. The chalk had marked the board. He sailed from one end of the black sea to the other, godlike despot of higher education, charting out the rules and measures of the universe. He turned upon us in ferocious triumph, then at me. I was called. “What is the object’s acceleration relative to the viewer?”
I gulped. I had been watching. There was no excuse. Why couldn’t I understand this? Why couldn’t math be math and art and logic and everything else, as a tree which is 20’ 3”, branches beautifully, does not contradict itself, is useful for lumber, for climbing …
He was staring at me intensely from his dictatorial platform. “I – I. What happened to truth? Where?”
This was out of order. He marked a tally by my name, the second one of the day. “This!” he said pointing to one of Newton’s laws, “This is truth!” That is what he always said. Why couldn’t I except it? But he had only given me an example, not an answer.
I started to loose focus. The rules and measure in front of me began to spin wildly. The dark black board looked bleak and empty. Only chalk lines occupied it, forming a spinning orb of chaos. I needed to get out of here. I needed to get out!🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢
Hey, I like that one. Poor guy— I hate math, so I sympathize with him. The drama was good. Not overdone— just what someone who hated math would feel like.
Take it from an expert.
I think the math teacher was the better character though, not my narrator.
🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢
Nice one, Daeus! That nicely follows on making it look like it was taken for your story. 🙂
And, my other one from this week:
There was a thud on the grass as a shadow jumped off the brick wall surrounding Smidgen’s Nob.
The shadow looked both ways down the street and pulled open his jacket, patting around on the pockets. The file was still there.
An incredulous grin spread across his face and a muffled laugh disturbed the quiet night.
“Yessss . . . I did it!” a fist pump punctuated his exclamation.
A security camera atop the wall turned and zoomed in.
*
“In your opinion, Agent 89,” said Director Hannoway, “How did your experimental reconnaissance mission to Smidgen’s Nob go?”
“Pretty well, sir.” Agent 89 noticed the look on Hannoway’s face and got the feeling that his opinion was wrong.
“Tell me, 89.” Hannoway steepled his fingers thoughtfully. “How was it avoiding the doorway motion sensors?”
89 paled a little, opened his mouth and quickly closed it again, swallowing.
“I trust you left all the locks in good working order? And dropped nothing? Mr. Smidgen is very observant and you wouldn’t want to give him any suspicions, now.”
Agent 89 paled more.
“I . . . I don’t think I dropped anything. But the locks might have . . . been left in better shape, sir.”
Hannoway’s face looked partway amused. He pushed a piece of paper across the desk.
“We received this from Mr. Smidgen.”
Agent 89 picked it up and winced at the words.
“Stop looking inside my desk.”
Hannoway chuckled, “Let’s work on our recon skills today, shall we?”
I just watched Mission Impossible 4 with my brother. And I may or may not have been thinking of Benji Dunn. 😉
Question. Is anyone else having trouble keeping their stories within the word limit?
I constantly have to chop my stories to make ’em fit, so they are not always as good as I would like.The Scattered Writer
Yes! I am. Word limits are the bane of my existence, but it’s good to practice squeezing as much meaning as you can into as few words as possible. It’ll improve us in the end.
At least, that’s a good thing to tell myself.
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