FALL 2014 SHORT STORY CONTEST

[Rhodevus]

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?

Ya... but that is already a half an hour into the universe's creation. Usually they skip from the first few seconds to a billion years XD

[Furry Alairia and Algeria]

I have a feeling that mine's is going to be one of the only story that doesn't orientate around the time period it's set in.

[Bezombia]

I have a feeling that mine's is going to be one of the only story that doesn't orientate around the time period it's set in.

Mine halfway does.

Half of it is set in the very near future (near enough to still be considered MT by nationstates standards) while the other half is set in the 29th century.

[Furry Alairia and Algeria]

Mine's is set in which everything in the movie of Back to the Future still didn't exist.

[Pimps Inc]

Well,no 20th century stories then.

*Grabs story draft and kicks it out the door.*

[Nazi Flower Power]

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

Yes. You can use any historical setting.

[Pimps Inc]

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

Yes. You can use any historical setting.

*goes out door and searches frantically for draft.Returns drenched from rain*
"Got it!"

[Nazi Flower Power]

Yes. You can use any historical setting.

*goes out door and searches frantically for draft.Returns drenched from rain*
"Got it!"

Yay!

[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.

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

Judging was too difficult? Haven't looked at it that way. I can see where you're coming from there

[Laerod]

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

Judging was too difficult? Haven't looked at it that way. I can see where you're coming from there :D

You have to read every one of those words. Multiple times often enough. It gets harder the longer and less appealing the story is. The latter is mostly subjective, but the former can be limited somewhat.

[Unitaristic Regions]

Judging was too difficult? Haven't looked at it that way. I can see where you're coming from there

You have to read every one of those words. Multiple times often enough. It gets harder the longer and less appealing the story is. The latter is mostly subjective, but the former can be limited somewhat.

That sounds like the judges have to put more work into it than some writers...

[The New World Oceania]

You have to read every one of those words. Multiple times often enough. It gets harder the longer and less appealing the story is. The latter is mostly subjective, but the former can be limited somewhat.

That sounds like the judges have to put more work into it than some writers...

Inherently.

[Nazi Flower Power]

You have to read every one of those words. Multiple times often enough. It gets harder the longer and less appealing the story is. The latter is mostly subjective, but the former can be limited somewhat.

That sounds like the judges have to put more work into it than some writers...

They do. Contestants only have to write one story, but judges have to read all of them.

[Vancon]

That sounds like the judges have to put more work into it than some writers...

They do. Contestants only have to write one story, but judges have to read all of them.

My body is ready

[Old Tyrannia]

Just registering my interest. I wanted to enter the last competition, but I never managed to finish my story in time. But this year, things shall be different! This year, I will finish!

[Rostogovia]

Bliss Amongst the Bloodshed


The Somme, November 1916
Lieutenant Lewis Livingston wiped the sweat from his brow as he surveyed the now empty battlefield, what was once verdant countryside had been reduced to a sea of writhing corpses. The Battle had been vacated almost immediately after the fighting ceased, as if it's participants were too ashamed to look upon it. The sun beamed down scornfully, as if to show its disgust at the day's events. As he walked through the field, the fetid, all too familiar smell of death assailed his nose. It was truly a blessing that he could not correlate his minds contents all at once, for an unstoppable wave of despair and cynicism was slowly enveloping his mind. He remembered the fiery invocations of biblical passages, the patriotic ramblings of the politicians, the all consuming fervor of those first days.
As he wandered along the battlefield, movement caught his eye from across the field. Immediately he hurried towards the living dead man, silently beseeching god. Beseeching for what, he didn't know, all he knew was that something inhuman had occurred. As he approached the dying man, he was greeted with a pair of uncaring, calm eyes. "How could any man lie so blissful in this slaughter?, he thought uneasily. "You needn't help me.", the man said nonchalantly as he coughed up crimson specs of blood.
Unsure why, the lieutenant turned and fled from the dying man, gripped by an inexplicable terror. How could this man be so accepting of his fate, so willing to embrace his demise? This battlefield was an unworldly place, it was a place where any man could be reduced to a writhing mass of despair and uncertainty. His mind, searching for solace, wandered to an old song. "It's a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way to go!" As his thoughts turned to the old song, he felt a wave of warmth return to his grief ridden body. "It's a long way to Tipperary, to the sweetest girl I know!" Without fully meaning to he opened his mouth and began to sing. "Goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Lester Square! It's a long long way to Tipperary, but my heart's right there." Like a child, reluctant to step out of a pool on a cold day, Lewis found he simply could not stop singing.
Soon, he forgot about the horrors of the day; the music was all he could think of. Hours went by as he belted out the chorus over and over again, as the song became his sole existence. The song had given him respite from the horror, and he did not intend to stop. Reality faded into nothingness, as the song enveloped every aspect of his mind. That was 30 years ago. Now Lewis resides in Broadmoor assylum, still singing to this day. His life is a simple one, he sings, eats, sleeps, and waits to die. In an effort not to think of the horror, he no longer has to think at all.

[Norstal]

Just registering my interest. I wanted to enter the last competition, but I never managed to finish my story in time. But this year, things shall be different! This year, I will finish!

Eh, I'd say even if you don't finish you should still enter unless you want to finish it up and then enter it for the next contest.

[Howslandia]

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

Yes. You can use any historical setting.

Oh thank God because mine is roughly set in the 1870's-1890's

[Laerod]

Could we spoiler the stories? By "we" I mean the people posting their stories thus far, if that's not clear.

[Pimps Inc]

Red White and Blue Dawn
The night was quiet.No birds chirped in the background nor was there any dogs barking at every passerby.Nothing.The city was dead silent along with its residents.The usual buzzing of activity and civilization that could be heard by anyone when they entered Berlin was not heard.If you entered the city just a few years back,it was a complete different sight and experience.The sidewalks were full of people and the roads congested with cars,filling the sky with a light smog that would cover the city and the people.The propaganda the government called news told of how the war was going well.How the Third Reich was to live in glory for a thousand years and then a thousand years more.Propaganda all of it.

At least that's what Estella thought.She lay in bed,not being able to sleep even though the night was quiet and cool.Maybe it was the amount of silence that disturbed her.In all her 16 years of life in Berlin,she had never heard the city be so quiet.The only thing that could barely break the silence,was the sound of boots crushing the pebbles in the asphalt making a squeak sound as the rubber was moved awkwardly by the foot of the soldier.At least she thought she heard that.Could she be going insane?No.She had heard that.The soldiers were patrolling the streets.It had been announced at dinner time that the Russians were going to bombard us.Now that she thought this,the memories of her taste of what was war all came back to her in a flood of flashbacks.

An SS soldier lay bleeding and screaming in the hospital while doctors cut at his arm.A sea of blood gushed out as the saw cut through the infected flesh.A burning Tiger 1 on its side with the men inside rushing out as they tried in vain to roll in the blood covered floor to extinguish their pain.A Hitler Youth was being carried by his fellow brothers in arms.His legs and everything that that is under the waist in the human anatomy was gone and only a bloody stump of bone and intestines replaced it.The boy screamed for mama as his eyes rolled behind their sockets and he breathed one last gulp of smoky air.

These and far worse memories came to her.Things of war too horrid to tell for they would cause nightmares to the most cold hearted of men.From 1939 to now in 1945,World War 2 had been fought at the expense of the innocent and the not so innocent.Both sides had their stories and reasons for war.Both sides tried to justify their war crimes.The so called Allies that were too proud of themselves that it was a wonder they could be on the same side.A few years back the British had attacked their "allied" French navy and sunk a great chunk of their fleet.When the bombers of the Americans flew overhead and dropped their bombs killing a many a men,women and of course children.The Third Reich and the Japanese were not saints either.The Nazis and the genocide of Jews.The Japanese and the torture of "Allied" prisoners of war.

While she thought this the silence was not broken but destroyed as the air raid siren screamed its warning of the attack to the city.Soldiers hurried in the street to the houses to warn the citizens.Estella's door was thrown open by a frail old woman in her late 70s.Nana.She grabbed Estella by the arm and got her out of bed.They both hurried down the flight of old stairs into the chill air and the pale moonlight.They were pushed out by the German soldiers and pulled into the "Medical Bunker" by the nurses and doctors already there.She along with them would have to be ready for the sea of wounded that would arrive from the surface.The soldiers that weren't lucky or fast enough to reach a bunker.

Boom!The earth rocked with massive force as the bombs began to hit home.There had been no early warning whistle of bombs because this wasn't just an air raid.The rumored thousands of Russian artillery pieces and their 7 million shells were also firing that night.The barrels turning red with heat and expelling steam as their crews pushed the mechanisms to the limit.The planes and their pilots flew overhead the city center,dropping their payload upon the waiting cowering crowds below.The propellers drowned out by the sound of massacre.These war crimes,Estella had nicknamed the Red,White,and Blue.Red for Russians,White for French and British,and Blue for the Americans and Canadians.

As the minutes passed the explosions only increased.After only half an hour,the first waves of the wounded sea began to hit the medical staff.Soldiers cut in half and imploring for loved ones.Dying men and children repenting of their sins as their life flashed before their eyes.Doctors cutting them open and bandaging them while muttering prayers.Estella raced throughout this sea helping different patients.She worked with determination.She worked through all this with a stone face.She had not gotten used to it ,since it was impossible to get used to being around death,but rather knew that she was needed and that she would help no matter for her amount of fear.

The explosions grew closer and more powerful.Usually after a while,the bombs would cease but it seemed this was not the case tonight.Eventually the wounded were no longer being carried in but they were blasted in by the explosions.The cement began to buckle until eventually it collapsed killing the dying and the ones helping the dying.Estella was one of the few that survived only to realize what was happening.As the Russian chant for the motherland began to be heard,so could the MG-42s and the mortars and the Assault rifles.She screamed and screamed as the memories once again flooded her with so much force that her eyes rolled behind their sockets just like that Hitler Youth boy.Berlin would fall by the break of the Red,White,and Blue Dawn....

[Nazi Flower Power]

Just registering my interest. I wanted to enter the last competition, but I never managed to finish my story in time. But this year, things shall be different! This year, I will finish!

Eh, I'd say even if you don't finish you should still enter unless you want to finish it up and then enter it for the next contest.

But you're just going lose if you enter half a story, and then you never get to find out how you would have done if you finished.

[Vancon]

So in total, how many stories do we have so far?

[Pimps Inc]

3 done.Rest are WIP.(Maybe.)

[Nazi Flower Power]

3 done.Rest are WIP.(Maybe.)

And about a month to go before the deadline, so there is still plenty of time for WIP to get finished.

I have about 3000 words written.

[Unitaristic Regions]

I think I have 3000 as well? I don't think I really have a winning formula here, but I am having a lot of fun writing this thing.