FALL 2014 SHORT STORY CONTEST

[Unitaristic Regions]

How important is the 6000 maximum? Because it's not very much to work with...

If you go over, you are disqualified.

Reading and scoring the stories can be time-consuming for the judges, and I am reluctant to raise the limit on word count because depending on how many entries we get and how many people want to write more than 6000 words, it might be too much work for the judges. The limit has not always been 6000, but there has always been a limit on word count, and I think 6000 is a good balance between giving contestants room to express themselves and keeping the workload manageable for the judges.

If people are interested in having another contest in the winter or spring, I am willing to host another one and I am open to the possibility of having different rules in future contests.

Okay, it makes sense. I'll try and nibble away at my formatting then.

[Unitaristic Regions]

How important is the 6000 maximum? Because it's not very much to work with...

Jesus Christ it's a short story not a damned novella

Eh, there's short story contests allowing stories up to 10000 words, and I asked because the allowed amounts of words have been larger. Why you get worked up over that, is a mystery to me.

[The New World Oceania]

Jesus Christ it's a short story not a damned novella

Eh, there's short story contests allowing stories up to 10000 words, and I asked because the allowed amounts of words have been larger. Why you get worked up over that, is a mystery to me.

Are you becoming defensive by claiming aggression on my part?

[Bezombia]

Eh, there's short story contests allowing stories up to 10000 words, and I asked because the allowed amounts of words have been larger. Why you get worked up over that, is a mystery to me.

Are you becoming defensive by claiming aggression on my part?

Clearly you're becoming defensively aggressive by aggressively claiming that he's being defensively defensive by claiming, aggressively, that you're being aggressively aggressive.

*drops the mic*

[The New World Oceania]

Are you becoming defensive by claiming aggression on my part?

Clearly you're becoming defensively aggressive by aggressively claiming that he's being defensively defensive by claiming, aggressively, that you're being aggressively aggressive.

*drops the mic*

Why do you feel the need to get aggressively defensive over me being defensively aggressive about his defensive defense, especially with his aggressive claim that I'm aggressively aggressive, you defensively aggressive defending aggressor!

[Howslandia]

The Darkness Breeds Evil

No breathing, none at all. I cannot breathe, my lungs cannot expand. I am surely dead. The reality of death seems all the more real when life bursts forth and pulls you into its grasp. A burst of wind hits me that rockets me from my bed onto my knees. I clutch at my rapidly pulsating chest. The feeling of breath, of air, of life, does nothing more but cause the feeling of death to seem more of a reality. I look around into the darkness of my bedroom, paranoid and frightened by the nothingness that is there. Nothing at all. The thought of nothing being in the darkness is much more horrendous than the thought of an inherent evil lurking. My skin trembled, my chest thumped quickly, my entire being quivered. It quivered at the pure silence. At the nothingness. I managed to stand in my weakened state, and I searched for my match and candle. I find them next to my bed, and upon lighting the candle, I suddenly feel alive again. I stumble to my dresser drawer that rests on the other side of my bedroom, next to the door, and I forcefully pull open the top drawer. Frantically I fumble around in the drawer, and finally find my revolver, and pull it out. I had purchased the weapon for a purpose. That purpose would be to defend myself from the darkness. My companions and acquaintances deemed me as crazy for making a purchase of such an item for said reason. This made me quite daft at them, and I cursed them, in which they left my presence for good. Venturing out of my chamber and into the rest of my abode, I was quickly met with the presence of death looming over me. The candle, the light, caused life to consume me, but with the darkness surrounding the light, it gave the ghastly feeling of my life filled body being entombed by death. It felt like being buried alive. I cocked the hammer of the gun, and advanced further. A sudden feeling of dread dawned upon me as I entered the parlor. I fell over in a stupor, and my vision became distorted and blurry. My light had extinguished when it hit the floor, and then the darkness surrounded me yet again. I was surely dead. No breath. No pulsation of the lungs, just death. A sound rang out from a corner of the parlor, the distorted chime of a grandfather clock. Midnight had struck, the horrific hour of midnight, for it was the darkest hour of the night, the evil hour. I lay there on the hard floor of the parlor, dead, that is until life sucked me back into its grasp yet again. I burst from my state of lifelessness and breathlessness into a state of sudden


awaking. As I shot up from the floor into a sitting position, I had taken in a deep, sharp breath. Darkness, death, still encompassed me, and I quickly grabbed the candle, and re-lit it, and allowed life to flow through me again. I snatched the gun from where it had hit the floor, and aimed it at the evil that was lurking, which was the darkness. I cursed it as it had thrown me into a
madman’s rage. My being had a sudden feeling of adrenaline and I flung myself
up to my feet. With a new vigor, I recollected my thoughts and what I could of my sanity, and pressed on further, now entering the study. My feet slightly quaked, as the study was the largest room within the house. It also had now windows, and was the darkest room as well, making it the most hellish room in the house, as it bared the most evil. I held the gun in front of me with my accurate hand, and I held the light with my other. Voyaging forth, faint whispers, whispers of the evil lurking in the nothingness of the dark, started to present themselves. The further I traveled in the study, the clearer the whispers became, reaching the point of understanding the slurs, slander, blasphemy, and threats they preached. I began to sweat, and I clenched the gun tighter, until finally reaching my target area. The fireplace. Setting the gun on the comfortable chair that I had placed in front of the fireplace, I drew another match that I had kept in the pocket of my sleepwear. With the whispers growing louder, in a trembling state, I hurriedly struck the match on the mantle, and tossed it in the fireplace, where the wood within it ignited, which caused light to permeate the room of evil. The whispers stopped immediately, and I fetched the gun out of the chair, turn the chair to face the opposite way, and took a much needed seat. I was assured that the large and powerful light from the fireplace would keep life within my body, and defend me from all the darkness. But that ended quickly, when the whispers returned, this time distorted in their tone. They were louder than before but now were unclear, yet that did not distract me from their demonic nature. Then my life was drained from me, when with a great wave of an unseen demon arm, the fire was snuffed out, taking my light, my security, with it. My lungs stopped their function, breath left let again. A pair of red orbs- orbs of fire that provided no light, and symbolized the opposite of life- began to peer at me from the nothingness of the satanic darkness. They slowly approached me, and with all the might I could build up, I raised the gun, and fired at the orbs. They continued their approach, and I pulled the hammer back once more, and fired yet again at the manifested evil of darkness. But they just drew closer, and closer. I no longer could work up the strength to aim


the weapon any longer, and dropped it. Suffocating and filled with the token that I would meet an unmerciful fate. I watched in utter horror as the orbs stood not but inches from mine own face, and I felt my lungs crush inside me. Before my end had come, I had come to the true reality of my fears. The fear of nothing in the darkness is the same as the fear of an inherent evil lurking within the darkness, as the darkness births evil, so there is never nothing within the darkness. When this realization entered my mind, all faded away, reality disappeared, and life ceased to exist. I am now surely dead.

[Bezombia]

Clearly you're becoming defensively aggressive by aggressively claiming that he's being defensively defensive by claiming, aggressively, that you're being aggressively aggressive.

*drops the mic*

Why do you feel the need to get aggressively defensive over me being defensively aggressive about his defensive defense, especially with his aggressive claim that I'm aggressively aggressive, you defensively aggressive defending aggressor!

Sounds to me like you're aggressively defending your aggressive defense of your defensive aggression. In fact, your claim that the defensive aggressive aggro-defender is not only offensive and repulsive, but aggressively offensive and defensively repulsive.

[Nazi Flower Power]

Why do you feel the need to get aggressively defensive over me being defensively aggressive about his defensive defense, especially with his aggressive claim that I'm aggressively aggressive, you defensively aggressive defending aggressor!

Sounds to me like you're aggressively defending your aggressive defense of your defensive aggression. In fact, your claim that the defensive aggressive aggro-defender is not only offensive and repulsive, but aggressively offensive and defensively repulsive.

Can't we all just get along?

[Furry Alairia and Algeria]

Sounds to me like you're aggressively defending your aggressive defense of your defensive aggression. In fact, your claim that the defensive aggressive aggro-defender is not only offensive and repulsive, but aggressively offensive and defensively repulsive.

Can't we all just get along?

NO.

[Bezombia]

Sounds to me like you're aggressively defending your aggressive defense of your defensive aggression. In fact, your claim that the defensive aggressive aggro-defender is not only offensive and repulsive, but aggressively offensive and defensively repulsive.

Can't we all just get along?

Stop defensing me!

[Unitaristic Regions]

Eh, there's short story contests allowing stories up to 10000 words, and I asked because the allowed amounts of words have been larger. Why you get worked up over that, is a mystery to me.

Are you becoming defensive by claiming aggression on my part?

Uh... Claiming?

Jesus Christ it's a short story not a damned novella

But yeah, let's just drop it.

[Laerod]

Jesus Christ it's a short story not a damned novella

Eh, there's short story contests allowing stories up to 10000 words, and I asked because the allowed amounts of words have been larger. Why you get worked up over that, is a mystery to me.

If you'd read and judged the entries, you'd know. Oh, you'd know ;_;

[Nazi Flower Power]

Eh, there's short story contests allowing stories up to 10000 words, and I asked because the allowed amounts of words have been larger. Why you get worked up over that, is a mystery to me.

If you'd read and judged the entries, you'd know. Oh, you'd know ;_;

Was it that traumatic?

But yeah... It is a lot of work to judge. I think if I was going to allow entries up to 10,000 words, I'd institute a TL;DR rule that allows entries between 5000 and 10,000 words to be declared "TL;DR" and not scored if one of the judges thinks the writing is too awkward to read that much.

[Pimps Inc]

Are stories allowed to have a historic setting?

[Laerod]

Are stories allowed to have a historic setting?

Can historical settings be copyrighted?

[Bezombia]

Are stories allowed to have a historic setting?

Can historical settings be copyrighted?

Can I file for a patent on the time period that I was alive?

[Nerotysia]

Can historical settings be copyrighted?

Can I file for a patent on the time period that I was alive?

Not anymore, because I already have. No stories allowed set in the 2000s, folks.

[Furry Alairia and Algeria]

Good thing mine's doesn't focus itself on time

because I don't have humans .-.

[Bezombia]

Can I file for a patent on the time period that I was alive?

Not anymore, because I already have. No stories allowed set in the 2000s, folks.

Is that the decade, century, or millennium?

[Rhodevus]

Not anymore, because I already have. No stories allowed set in the 2000s, folks.

Is that the decade, century, or millennium?

second. No stories are allowed to take place in the 2000th second of the universe.

[Pimps Inc]

What about the last century?Do the rules let us?

[Bezombia]

Is that the decade, century, or millennium?

second. No stories are allowed to take place in the 2000th second of the universe.

Well that's good, because my story is set billions of years after that.

[Bezombia]

What about the last century?Do the rules let us?

Sorry I'm pretty sure the Koch Brothers copyrighted the 20th century.

[Rhodevus]

second. No stories are allowed to take place in the 2000th second of the universe.

Well that's good, because my story is set billions of years after that.

It seems like a useless thing to patent/trademark/whateveryoucallit.

who would write stories so close to the beginning of the universe, unless it is about time travel?

[Bezombia]

Well that's good, because my story is set billions of years after that.

It seems like a useless thing to patent/trademark/whateveryoucallit.

who would write stories so close to the beginning of the universe, unless it is about time travel?

Documentaries about the beginning of the universe?