Short Story Contest (Spring 2012) Winners Announced!

by **Astrolinium** » Fri May 18, 2012 3:06 am

Conserative Morality wrote:
Astrolinium wrote:https://www.box.com/s/81c12171fa12eb7a6b89

Euge!

Important Note:
It's pronounced "Peh-daw-full-ease" for our purposes.

*sigh*

You know I have a weakness for Rome.

Judgement for Astrolinium's Play
Characters - 16/25

Alright, Superbus is the quintessential, modern, mildly narcissistic smartass (IN ROME). He may not be the deepest or most original character ever, but I fell in love with him anyway. Junior is simply an adesolent in love. Everything else about him is simply a vehicle for the plot/comedy. Same with most of the other characters.

Plot - 22/25

I must confess, you did a good job of making a short comedic play. Revealing that Superbus taught the parrot to speak in order to get Furata her freedom at the end was an excellent end to the story.

Setting - 10/15

Rome, but there wasn't much room for description.

Creativity - 10/15

Let's face it, this was a retelling of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. A GOOD retelling, mind. But I'm still taking points off for that. The jokes were pretty original though, and appealed to the amateur historian in me.

Style - 12/15

Characters lack significant individual voice, but the jokes were good, and that's really what matters, isn't it? The dialogue flowed smoothly and set up the situations quite well.

Grammar/spelling - 5/5

I didn't see any mistakes. æ technically can be written simply as ae though.

Overall - 75/100

I am rather pleased with this judgment, as it shows I did a good job of writing Roman-style comedy. Plautine Comedies relied heavily on stock situations, stock characters without much unique personality, and most of them had the same basic plot. (A Funny Thing Happened, in fact, is simply a meshing together of Pseudolus, Miles Gloriosus, and Mostellaria. This process of blending plays written by others was a favorite of Plautus's and was called contaminatio.)
So I thank you for your commentary, as it means I've achieved what I set out to do.

by **Nationstatelandsville** » Fri May 18, 2012 12:49 pm

Jenrak wrote:My submission.

An Open Letter to Sudentor Publishers,

I grew up in a small meadowy place called Riverbrook, where we had a sort of quaint and Constable feel to it, with a small running river that cut through the center of the town. Now, we call it a town, but it was more of a hamlet, really, and there wasn’t a sort of self-containment that we could really say belonged to a town; we walked or rode to New Albert just over the bends to get most of our supplies for hunting and fishing and farming, but we had a greengrocer’s and a small shop that came now and then, though as I got older they came much, much less often.

The winters were terrible things. They were complete horrid monstrosities that gave a short of chilling gleam and gloom that froze all of Riverbrook and cast the place is a sort of dreary presence of the forested glens that were just past the way to New Albert. One of my friends, a certain animated Lawrence Talbot had the idea to ride down the frozen river as if it were like a slide. Of course, as we never really wanted to get caught in the river’s strong currents, we never allowed ourselves to see what was at the end of the currents.

So, with his toboggan, we convinced me like the young, foolish twat I was to join him in this running slide down the river, rushing all the way down to a steep and curved embankment with a tall and imposing tree, hitting us on the way, knocking both Lawrence and myself out cold and smashing his toboggan.

When we awoke, the crunching of snow was heard as we were being slowly pulled away in old Mark Jenson’s cart, the smell of urine and feces still strong back here. Of course, we did not have a choice, and Lawrence had a particularly nasty gash on his cheek leading down to his chin that was very hastily and poorly stitched, but still bleeding enough to look frighteningly intimidating.

I began with the accident of Lawrence Talbot and myself because I believe that was the first time I became exposed – though indirectly so – to the most important person in my life. I cannot sufficiently say with great certainty that this was the first time that she came into my life and affected it so, and the event had a certain difference in meaning for Lawrence than I. But for me, that was the closest to an origins of the meeting.

I am sending this message because of a recent publisher’s mistake on the author’s decision to interview information on me while I was off in Laarsgard and without communication. They had the brash and bold decision to ask my wife, and though I love her dearly, I cannot say with clarity and certainty of thought that she knew me well enough or was so unbiased. Truly, because those three pages of Walking on Thin Ice: The Life of Lord Patterson kept me up all night the moment I read it to the extent that I wished – and certainly have done now – sent a piece of my thoughts to the editor of the biography.

Certainly, I have read the majority of the work in the book, and I can agree with to those, even if I could be considered to be an “affable twat with a twist of military man in his blood yet all too frightened to fight” (Lewis 64). I cannot disagree with that, and the War was certainly far too viciously barbaric and gruesome for me to suspect.

But the most important person in my life? It was not my wife. It was not my father, or my mother, my friend Lawrence Talbot (may he rest in peace, that dear man), or anybody of that sort. None have reverberated with me so strongly, so uncontested!, even, as that of an old woman by the name of Amelia Wretch.

Her name, of course, was not ‘Wretch’ – we didn’t know, and we never bothered to know. She lived alone by the wayside of the banks on the edge of the riverway, just past the large trees leading to the glens beyond the town. Her house was a terribly old and decrepit thing, standing like a dainty and yet feeble old woman, creaking loudly in pain beneath ever-gloom and black clouds. Amelia was of the sort where she looked like what she owned – old, decrepit, and feeble. She leaned on one stick and snarled, and occasionally she would slowly emerge from that dark, dust-filled and musty home of hers to get the mail, before retreating into the safety of her black fortress.

Like some sort of old strip, the house was old but large, and it loomed like an ancient castle over a tiny, sleepy and unsuspecting hamlet. Growing up, the adults of Riverbrook had told us stories of whispers in the night at the old Wretch mansion, of a howling and a bawling and a shrieking noise that seemed so unheard and unimaginable. In the dark of night, on full moons, we can hear the lonely cries of a feeble old thing from its boarded windows, and for a small little period, I had felt a sort of mercy for old Amelia.

But, even young, I grew untrusting, as the town was cast in a frightful shadow of the Wretch mansion. Every year, a small group of jippos came from the west, just over the hills from New Albert, peddling their wares. We tolerated them their terrible stench, filthy actions, their dirty feces-covered boots stamping everywhere, and unnatural language, as they only came once a year. They sold small assortment of exotic spices and a tiny bit of trifle jewellery, and every single year they would slowly send someone up to the very haunting, creeping doors of the Wretch mansion with a small box of their finest wares.

I remember one day when I was around six or seven, an old and skeletal finger gaunt in deep shadows and wrapped in twined and needles emerged from the darkness of the doors of the mansion, and a small jippo girl walked into the doors and was never seen again. I had never truly believed that Amelia was anything but a lonely woman, crying out for some long lost love, but every full moon I could scarcely think anything but what was likely the source of those hellish siren calls. And I, over time, grew increasingly frightened of the Wretch mansion and the eyes that peered out at the town through boarded windows.

One year was a particularly frightening year for us. Viola, a girl that every young boy (including myself) pined for had emerged from her father’s barn, shrieking and crying with tears running down her face, cold and terrible and her hands clasping at her hair. She babbled with an indecipherable shutter, bursting into the community hall in a torn dress and a bruises down her legs.

“That fiend! That fiend!”, she yelled, shaking and quivering as the sheriff placed a blanket over her body and calmed her down, “H-He...He lured me into the barn, and...”

The sheriff, Nigel Talbot, had loose lips. It wasn’t long before Lawrence, growing into a fine young man, had heard that night of the terrible things that had befallen Viola at the hands of a young jippo man, who came to with his family and had with his pretty face and alluring accent had ensnared Viola and had his way with her in the barn.

I remember the first person Lawrence had gone to when he heard the news was me. He had told this story with such a fury in his eyes. At that age, his voice was already deep and his figure large and I was growing into a larger man myself. Together, we thought we could take on this vile man. With a lantern and a bat, we rushed under the dark of night back to the old brook that lead to the river, and looked at the large wagon that was their home. A flicker of dancing light from the windows were there, and the two of us ran to the windows, hit the sides, and threw our lantern into the room.

With a jolt and a rush, we ran off into the night, the pyre in the cold forests lit brightly as the flames guided our path back home. We heard no screams nor trails, and Nigel never really looked past the event other than an ‘accident’. The next week, when I saw Amelia emerge from her home in her homemade coats and quilts she had stitched together to get the mail, her face in a twisted fury.

A year later, in a drunken daze, Viola had brazenly and boldly bespoke to us that she had made it all up, as the young man had resisted her advances and she could not bear such a man getting away. Lawrence and I had felt terrible, but memories were things in the heat of the moment.

The election of Nicholas Lamorte was not something we really resonated with at the beginning. None of the townsfolk in Riverbrook had any sort of consideration or thought about who Lamorte was, safe for the fact that he had changed some of the policies that his predecessor did. By now, Lawrence and I were already in our twenties, and Miss Amelia continued to haunt us still in that dreary and dooming house of hers. The fears never really died within us.

But what did make us feel better was the wave of soldiers that would regularly come in, and as they did so, we saw less and less of the jippos that came to sell their wares. “They must be rounded and sent to the Capitol!” The soldiers would yell when they would see the wagon-load of people who would come to sell their goods, marshalling them off into the darkness. “They are a blight upon our country!”

Lawrence, with his mind so quick to forget Viola’s drunken utterances, had openly pined to become a soldier like those who walked through the town every few weeks on their way to something more important. “It is the highest justice”, he would argue with me, his eyes bright on the rifles and the medals and the marching and the whole romantic stoicism that had enthralled him to such a glory.

I had no such thoughts, but I respect his dreams. Shortly after our last talk in the late of December, Lawrence cut his hair, tattooed Lamorte’s “For the Country” onto his arm, and joined the army. I scarcely saw him after that, as he was never stationed near Riverbrook.

The next time I saw Lawrence was the time I met my first real love, a jippo girl who had come by the name of Sarah. The visits became less often coming to Riverbrook, as the scar of Viola was still fresh in the minds of the people and the soldiers were quick to scoop them up in the trucks and whisk them away in the night. This one week they had come early in the morning as I was finishing fixing up one of the wheels on the carriages from New Albert. At first, I was apprehensive, for I did not see them over the hills before I heard them, and had thought that it was another recruiting drive. The war had grown worse, and men were enlisting up in droves to protect the Capitol. Lawrence himself had sent back letters of a sordid sort, telling of the horrors he faced in the rubble of our homeland’s greatest.

Rather, I was surprised to see the light of a woman – a beautiful woman – who did not do or say much other than smile to me. With foolish grins I would smile back, and in that brief moment, I had known I fell in love. It wasn’t subtle or slow, nor was it something that I could scarcely say was washed with a great feeling upon me. No, it just hit me hard and fast, and that night, I had asked her if she wished to stay with me to watch the stars under a clear moon night. She said yes. Her family, though distasteful of my request, had decided to give way, as they said they had planned to stay on the edges of Riverbrook for the week.

Her name was Eleanor, and she was my first love. She had intense, chestnut eyes and a radiant smile that none could have matched. She had long flowing hair tied back into a beautiful bun and her hands were dainty things that were dirtied through years of hard work and travel. There were some lines on her face that made her seem older than her years, yet I did not care about that. She was beautiful me, strikingly so.

Lawrence returned to Riverbrook two days after I met Eleanor, his face more tired than I had ever seen him. At first, I had thought he would do his soldier’s duty and take her away to the Capitol, but when he had found out that afternoon of my love of Eleanor he shook his head at disappointment at me. “You shouldn’t worry about that.” He would flash a bright grin, his hair slicked back with that old toboggan scar still not faded on his cheek. “Rather, I’m more angry you Daniel for not telling me you fell in love. Congratulations to you!” He said, before telling me he needed to talk to me.

That night, we sat with rum in our glasses under a cold, large moon. The cries of Amelia were heart, but fainter now. She did not speak as much, and scarce came out. I had all but forgotten about Amelia as I grew older, no longer caring yet still scared of her in the Wretch mansion.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” Lawrence asked me, taking a swig. “She’s...going to leave. You may never see her again.”

“I know. I’m going with her.” I told him. Lawrence had a look of shock on his face at first, but his eyes had softened since I last saw him. He had no more fire in his soul of that sort.

“I can’t say anything to convince you otherwise?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Okay.” He held his hand out. “Godspeed to you.”

We shook hands and drank.

Early that morning, I had wanted to talk to her, but apparently the carriage was gone. Running back to Lawrence’s house, he and I took the horses to the paths that the wagons had gone, and rushing through Riverbrook’s pathways down the river, but we never found her.

However, from the Wretch mansion, dirty boot prints leading up to the creaky front door were seen, and Lawrence and I could only scarcely wonder what could have happened. A rage built up inside of me, followed by a fear. A very, very damning fear. A different sort of fear. Not one of trepidation, but a fear of concern. Without reason, yet with all the reason I could muster in the world, I blamed Amelia that day for taking Eleanor away from me.

And she did.

I write this to you, editor of Sudentor Publishers, because Amelia Wretch’s shadow – as frightening as they were – became the most influential thing in my life. Amelia became the most influential person in my life. The feeble woman, who lived so long and caused so much fear to boil within me died shortly after, and the Wretch mansion had begun to fall into disrepair.

I returned after a brief command and career in the waning days of the War, following Lawrence to defend the Capitol to no avail. When we returned back home, Riverbrook had changed and became a small assortment of dying homesteads, with only the large brooding mansion on the banks overlooking us all. It was a quaint, yet fitting image: the husk of a castle watching faithfully the husk of a hamlet.

That night, I crept past the old metal gates of the mansion, and threw a cocktail into the house. Lawrence had no part in it, but he stood and watched, the two of us standing in the forests just a bit away from the house, looking at the pyre. Nobody came to the Wretch mansion, and I could have scarcely wondered what ever happened to all those women that Amelia had taken into the blackness of her home.

I did not know myself that Amelia had so changed my life until a few years later, when I fell in love with Lady Katrina and had an invitation to a sort of meeting of the people who had lost or been lost. Lawrence called me up that night, and asked if we should go. “Sure”, I had said, and so we went.

When we arrived, there was the usual soiree of soldiers we had fought alongside, but there was also a smaller group of people who we had wronged. We did not call them jippos anymore. Nobody did, after what Lamorte did to them. Nobody called them anything but people.

But one of them had a striking familiarity. It was Eleanor. She spoke the language now, much better than even I. She was schoolteacher now. The wounds were hard and long to heal, but they healed. I asked her where she went that day outside the hall, talking privately.

She told me ran to the Wretch mansion, to Amelia. She told me they knew of Riverbrook. She knew what was going on in the Capitol. And she knew that I loved her so much that she could not bear it. She left that day, willingly, because it was the right thing to her to do. “I chose that night, to run to the safe house,” she told me, “as so many others before me had chosen to do.”

Sincerely,
Daniel Patterson,
Lord of High County.

My God.

Characters - 22/25 Though only shreds of Eleanor and young Daniel's personalities, current Daniel is so very mournful and Lawrence's subtle development works silently.

Plot - 25/25 Rather brilliant. I thought it would be shreds of a man's life, barely connected, but then you tied it all together, and I realize now that this is the only way it could have worked.

Setting - 13/15 You could have given a bit given a bit more, but it's good.

Creativity - 15/15 Fantastic.

Style -15 /15 Damn it, Jenrak, I want something to complain about.

Grammar/spelling - 5/5 I saw nothing.

Overall - 95/100

by **Conserative Morality** » Fri May 18, 2012 12:53 pm

Jenrak wrote:My submission.

An Open Letter to Sudentor Publishers,

I grew up in a small meadowy place called Riverbrook, where we had a sort of quaint and Constable feel to it, with a small running river that cut through the center of the town. Now, we call it a town, but it was more of a hamlet, really, and there wasn’t a sort of self-containment that we could really say belonged to a town; we walked or rode to New Albert just over the bends to get most of our supplies for hunting and fishing and farming, but we had a greengrocer’s and a small shop that came now and then, though as I got older they came much, much less often.

The winters were terrible things. They were complete horrid monstrosities that gave a short of chilling gleam and gloom that froze all of Riverbrook and cast the place is a sort of dreary presence of the forested glens that were just past the way to New Albert. One of my friends, a certain animated Lawrence Talbot had the idea to ride down the frozen river as if it were like a slide. Of course, as we never really wanted to get caught in the river’s strong currents, we never allowed ourselves to see what was at the end of the currents.

So, with his toboggan, we convinced me like the young, foolish twat I was to join him in this running slide down the river, rushing all the way down to a steep and curved embankment with a tall and imposing tree, hitting us on the way, knocking both Lawrence and myself out cold and smashing his toboggan.

When we awoke, the crunching of snow was heard as we were being slowly pulled away in old Mark Jenson’s cart, the smell of urine and feces still strong back here. Of course, we did not have a choice, and Lawrence had a particularly nasty gash on his cheek leading down to his chin that was very hastily and poorly stitched, but still bleeding enough to look frighteningly intimidating.

I began with the accident of Lawrence Talbot and myself because I believe that was the first time I became exposed – though indirectly so – to the most important person in my life. I cannot sufficiently say with great certainty that this was the first time that she came into my life and affected it so, and the event had a certain difference in meaning for Lawrence than I. But for me, that was the closest to an origins of the meeting.

I am sending this message because of a recent publisher’s mistake on the author’s decision to interview information on me while I was off in Laarsgard and without communication. They had the brash and bold decision to ask my wife, and though I love her dearly, I cannot say with clarity and certainty of thought that she knew me well enough or was so unbiased. Truly, because those three pages of Walking on Thin Ice: The Life of Lord Patterson kept me up all night the moment I read it to the extent that I wished – and certainly have done now – sent a piece of my thoughts to the editor of the biography.

Certainly, I have read the majority of the work in the book, and I can agree with to those, even if I could be considered to be an “affable twat with a twist of military man in his blood yet all too frightened to fight” (Lewis 64). I cannot disagree with that, and the War was certainly far too viciously barbaric and gruesome for me to suspect.

But the most important person in my life? It was not my wife. It was not my father, or my mother, my friend Lawrence Talbot (may he rest in peace, that dear man), or anybody of that sort. None have reverberated with me so strongly, so uncontested!, even, as that of an old woman by the name of Amelia Wretch.

Her name, of course, was not ‘Wretch’ – we didn’t know, and we never bothered to know. She lived alone by the wayside of the banks on the edge of the riverway, just past the large trees leading to the glens beyond the town. Her house was a terribly old and decrepit thing, standing like a dainty and yet feeble old woman, creaking loudly in pain beneath ever-gloom and black clouds. Amelia was of the sort where she looked like what she owned – old, decrepit, and feeble. She leaned on one stick and snarled, and occasionally she would slowly emerge from that dark, dust-filled and musty home of hers to get the mail, before retreating into the safety of her black fortress.

Like some sort of old strip, the house was old but large, and it loomed like an ancient castle over a tiny, sleepy and unsuspecting hamlet. Growing up, the adults of Riverbrook had told us stories of whispers in the night at the old Wretch mansion, of a howling and a bawling and a shrieking noise that seemed so unheard and unimaginable. In the dark of night, on full moons, we can hear the lonely cries of a feeble old thing from its boarded windows, and for a small little period, I had felt a sort of mercy for old Amelia.

But, even young, I grew untrusting, as the town was cast in a frightful shadow of the Wretch mansion. Every year, a small group of jippos came from the west, just over the hills from New Albert, peddling their wares. We tolerated them their terrible stench, filthy actions, their dirty feces-covered boots stamping everywhere, and unnatural language, as they only came once a year. They sold small assortment of exotic spices and a tiny bit of trifle jewellery, and every single year they would slowly send someone up to the very haunting, creeping doors of the Wretch mansion with a small box of their finest wares.

I remember one day when I was around six or seven, an old and skeletal finger gaunt in deep shadows and wrapped in twined and needles emerged from the darkness of the doors of the mansion, and a small jippo girl walked into the doors and was never seen again. I had never truly believed that Amelia was anything but a lonely woman, crying out for some long lost love, but every full moon I could scarcely think anything but what was likely the source of those hellish siren calls. And I, over time, grew increasingly frightened of the Wretch mansion and the eyes that peered out at the town through boarded windows.

One year was a particularly frightening year for us. Viola, a girl that every young boy (including myself) pined for had emerged from her father’s barn, shrieking and crying with tears running down her face, cold and terrible and her hands clasping at her hair. She babbled with an indecipherable shutter, bursting into the community hall in a torn dress and a bruises down her legs.

“That fiend! That fiend!”, she yelled, shaking and quivering as the sheriff placed a blanket over her body and calmed her down, “H-He...He lured me into the barn, and...”

The sheriff, Nigel Talbot, had loose lips. It wasn’t long before Lawrence, growing into a fine young man, had heard that night of the terrible things that had befallen Viola at the hands of a young jippo man, who came to with his family and had with his pretty face and alluring accent had ensnared Viola and had his way with her in the barn.

I remember the first person Lawrence had gone to when he heard the news was me. He had told this story with such a fury in his eyes. At that age, his voice was already deep and his figure large and I was growing into a larger man myself. Together, we thought we could take on this vile man. With a lantern and a bat, we rushed under the dark of night back to the old brook that lead to the river, and looked at the large wagon that was their home. A flicker of dancing light from the windows were there, and the two of us ran to the windows, hit the sides, and threw our lantern into the room.

With a jolt and a rush, we ran off into the night, the pyre in the cold forests lit brightly as the flames guided our path back home. We heard no screams nor trails, and Nigel never really looked past the event other than an ‘accident’. The next week, when I saw Amelia emerge from her home in her homemade coats and quilts she had stitched together to get the mail, her face in a twisted fury.

A year later, in a drunken daze, Viola had brazenly and boldly bespoke to us that she had made it all up, as the young man had resisted her advances and she could not bear such a man getting away. Lawrence and I had felt terrible, but memories were things in the heat of the moment.

The election of Nicholas Lamorte was not something we really resonated with at the beginning. None of the townsfolk in Riverbrook had any sort of consideration or thought about who Lamorte was, safe for the fact that he had changed some of the policies that his predecessor did. By now, Lawrence and I were already in our twenties, and Miss Amelia continued to haunt us still in that dreary and dooming house of hers. The fears never really died within us.

But what did make us feel better was the wave of soldiers that would regularly come in, and as they did so, we saw less and less of the jippos that came to sell their wares. “They must be rounded and sent to the Capitol!” The soldiers would yell when they would see the wagon-load of people who would come to sell their goods, marshalling them off into the darkness. “They are a blight upon our country!”

Lawrence, with his mind so quick to forget Viola’s drunken utterances, had openly pined to become a soldier like those who walked through the town every few weeks on their way to something more important. “It is the highest justice”, he would argue with me, his eyes bright on the rifles and the medals and the marching and the whole romantic stoicism that had enthralled him to such a glory.

I had no such thoughts, but I respect his dreams. Shortly after our last talk in the late of December, Lawrence cut his hair, tattooed Lamorte’s “For the Country” onto his arm, and joined the army. I scarcely saw him after that, as he was never stationed near Riverbrook.

The next time I saw Lawrence was the time I met my first real love, a jippo girl who had come by the name of Sarah. The visits became less often coming to Riverbrook, as the scar of Viola was still fresh in the minds of the people and the soldiers were quick to scoop them up in the trucks and whisk them away in the night. This one week they had come early in the morning as I was finishing fixing up one of the wheels on the carriages from New Albert. At first, I was apprehensive, for I did not see them over the hills before I heard them, and had thought that it was another recruiting drive. The war had grown worse, and men were enlisting up in droves to protect the Capitol. Lawrence himself had sent back letters of a sordid sort, telling of the horrors he faced in the rubble of our homeland’s greatest.

Rather, I was surprised to see the light of a woman – a beautiful woman – who did not do or say much other than smile to me. With foolish grins I would smile back, and in that brief moment, I had known I fell in love. It wasn’t subtle or slow, nor was it something that I could scarcely say was washed with a great feeling upon me. No, it just hit me hard and fast, and that night, I had asked her if she wished to stay with me to watch the stars under a clear moon night. She said yes. Her family, though distasteful of my request, had decided to give way, as they said they had planned to stay on the edges of Riverbrook for the week.

Her name was Eleanor, and she was my first love. She had intense, chestnut eyes and a radiant smile that none could have matched. She had long flowing hair tied back into a beautiful bun and her hands were dainty things that were dirtied through years of hard work and travel. There were some lines on her face that made her seem older than her years, yet I did not care about that. She was beautiful me, strikingly so.

Lawrence returned to Riverbrook two days after I met Eleanor, his face more tired than I had ever seen him. At first, I had thought he would do his soldier’s duty and take her away to the Capitol, but when he had found out that afternoon of my love of Eleanor he shook his head at disappointment at me. “You shouldn’t worry about that.” He would flash a bright grin, his hair slicked back with that old toboggan scar still not faded on his cheek. “Rather, I’m more angry you Daniel for not telling me you fell in love. Congratulations to you!” He said, before telling me he needed to talk to me.

That night, we sat with rum in our glasses under a cold, large moon. The cries of Amelia were heart, but fainter now. She did not speak as much, and scarce came out. I had all but forgotten about Amelia as I grew older, no longer caring yet still scared of her in the Wretch mansion.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” Lawrence asked me, taking a swig. “She’s...going to leave. You may never see her again.”

“I know. I’m going with her.” I told him. Lawrence had a look of shock on his face at first, but his eyes had softened since I last saw him. He had no more fire in his soul of that sort.

“I can’t say anything to convince you otherwise?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Okay.” He held his hand out. “Godspeed to you.”

We shook hands and drank.

Early that morning, I had wanted to talk to her, but apparently the carriage was gone. Running back to Lawrence’s house, he and I took the horses to the paths that the wagons had gone, and rushing through Riverbrook’s pathways down the river, but we never found her.

However, from the Wretch mansion, dirty boot prints leading up to the creaky front door were seen, and Lawrence and I could only scarcely wonder what could have happened. A rage built up inside of me, followed by a fear. A very, very damning fear. A different sort of fear. Not one of trepidation, but a fear of concern. Without reason, yet with all the reason I could muster in the world, I blamed Amelia that day for taking Eleanor away from me.

And she did.

I write this to you, editor of Sudentor Publishers, because Amelia Wretch’s shadow – as frightening as they were – became the most influential thing in my life. Amelia became the most influential person in my life. The feeble woman, who lived so long and caused so much fear to boil within me died shortly after, and the Wretch mansion had begun to fall into disrepair.

I returned after a brief command and career in the waning days of the War, following Lawrence to defend the Capitol to no avail. When we returned back home, Riverbrook had changed and became a small assortment of dying homesteads, with only the large brooding mansion on the banks overlooking us all. It was a quaint, yet fitting image: the husk of a castle watching faithfully the husk of a hamlet.

That night, I crept past the old metal gates of the mansion, and threw a cocktail into the house. Lawrence had no part in it, but he stood and watched, the two of us standing in the forests just a bit away from the house, looking at the pyre. Nobody came to the Wretch mansion, and I could have scarcely wondered what ever happened to all those women that Amelia had taken into the blackness of her home.

I did not know myself that Amelia had so changed my life until a few years later, when I fell in love with Lady Katrina and had an invitation to a sort of meeting of the people who had lost or been lost. Lawrence called me up that night, and asked if we should go. “Sure”, I had said, and so we went.

When we arrived, there was the usual soiree of soldiers we had fought alongside, but there was also a smaller group of people who we had wronged. We did not call them jippos anymore. Nobody did, after what Lamorte did to them. Nobody called them anything but people.

But one of them had a striking familiarity. It was Eleanor. She spoke the language now, much better than even I. She was schoolteacher now. The wounds were hard and long to heal, but they healed. I asked her where she went that day outside the hall, talking privately.

She told me ran to the Wretch mansion, to Amelia. She told me they knew of Riverbrook. She knew what was going on in the Capitol. And she knew that I loved her so much that she could not bear it. She left that day, willingly, because it was the right thing to her to do. “I chose that night, to run to the safe house,” she told me, “as so many others before me had chosen to do.”

Sincerely,
Daniel Patterson,
Lord of High County.

Judgement for Jenrak's story.

by **Astrolinium** » Fri May 18, 2012 1:22 pm

CM, your spoiler for the judgment of Forsher's entry in the OP ate your link to Amland's entry.

by **Conserative Morality** » Fri May 18, 2012 1:29 pm

Astrolinium wrote:CM, your spoiler for the judgment of Forsher's entry in the OP ate your link to Amland's entry.

Thanks for pointing that out. I'd have missed it otherwise.

by **Nationstatelandsville** » Fri May 18, 2012 1:36 pm

Forsher wrote:I wasn't going to enter this, but I changed my minds. Be warned I wrote this three years ago. I'll do some editng (of the spelling) but there's a reason why I chose this text. I've never put it online so I think it wil qualify as new...

Tall and skinny that was Tea Pyd, a girl no more than thirteen years old. She had rough looking skin, short tawny brown hair, green tinged hazel eyes and a bony jaw. She disguised the jaw with a thick woollen scarf of turquoise colouration, hid her hair under a bandanna and covered her eyes with reflective sun glasses. Tea went to Yew College a large school for secondary students designed like a fortified town. Every student wore mufti and today Tea was clad in yellow socks, brown trousers, black shoes, a white skivvy and a jumper that proclaimed 'Haraald II'. It was made of black wool and cotton with the words in red cotton.

Next to Tea sat Rollo Masdin a dreadful cheat. Almost all the work Tea completed he copied out word for word in similar handwriting. His heart was truly stone. Sometimes he would be cunning like a fox and finish the last few words or sentences by himself and claim that Tea had copied him. He would normally play the trick when Tea was stuck on a difficult question or suffering from writer's block making it look like she was stumped without 'his' answers. This annoyed Tea who couldn't always complain that it was he who was cheating.

One day, not long after Tea's grandfather Lucas Pyd had given her a chest of antique draws, Tea wore a jumper that exclaimed, 'I'm a cheater and you're on a heater'. It was made by Harson Clothes, a brand notable for their horrible rhymes but exceedingly popular nonetheless. The first period of the day was English the only class where Tea sat next to anyone anymore. Belle Droggard was rushed to hospital five minutes in after sitting on a heater.

It was not until Tea got home that she realised what her jumper said, however, she didn't link it to Belle in any way other than coincidence. The next day she wore another jumper except it said 'Go to be bed you're a pain in his head.' Terrence O'Dil fell asleep during class and Rollo Masdin exclaimed, "Sir, Terrence is annoying me." As with before, Tea passed it off as coincidence.

On Friday, Tea took a jumper saying 'I just flew in from Texas, boy are my arms tired'. Once at school Madeline asked Tea a question. "Can I borrow your jumper?"

"Sure," Tea replied.

Madeline wore the jumper and was soon very sore in the arms department and plagued by questions about Texas. Neither were explainable as Madeline had no recollection of having visited Texas.

Once Tea got home she looked at her jumper and clicked. Her jumpers made things happen to the people wearing them or the people near them. The thought aroused Tea's curiosity so much that she rushed to the draws and pulled the first one over her head. What she didn't do was read the words: 'Warning. Explosive Chemicals.'

Belle, Terrence, Madeline and Rollo carried the coffin and Mr Kao performed the service. A minute's silence was observed through the school.

Ow. Ow. Goddamn it, ow. My brain is trying to kill itself.

Characters - 5/25 Well, the story had names, but not characters.

Plot - 1/25 I'm not sure if you think I'm five or not.

Setting - 5/15 Yes. It's a school. But what does it look like?

Creativity - 5/15 You created something original. Not something good, but something original.

Style - 5/15 Barely functional.

Grammar/spelling - 4/5 Only a few noticeable mistakes.

Overall - 25/100

by **Nationstatelandsville** » Fri May 18, 2012 1:42 pm

Amland wrote:Sort of
There lay the little girl, nicely tucked into her bed. Little Emily was a measly inch away from her mother, Caroline.
“Will you read me a bedtime story?” Emily said in her sweet little voice.
“Of course I will, sweetie pie! Here’s one that your grandmother used to read to me, back in the days.”
Emily was definitely excited to hear this story. She got comfy and waited for the words to come to her ears.
“Once upon a time, there was a little unicorn named Sparkles. She used to go around, helping people. One day, on a beautiful day,-“
“Wait,” interrupted Emily, “there’s something wrong about this story.”
“What seems to be the problem, my beauty?”
“Well,” she began, "beautiful days aren't real.”

Characters - 1/25 Hey, look. More names.

Plot - 1/25 Now, I know you think I'm a five year old.

Setting - 3/15 A bed? Where? Space? It's a space bed, isn't it?

Creativity - 0/15 You created distaste, but I doubt that was your intention.

Style - 5/15 Nothing is described with moderate skill. Sadly, it remains nothing.

Grammar/spelling - 5/5 I saw nothing.

Overall - 15/100 I want desperately to believe you're some kind of post-modern satirist genius, but I sincerely doubt it.

by **Lordieth** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:02 pm

When's the next contest. out of interest?

by **Nationstatelandsville** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:03 pm

Astrolinium wrote:https://www.box.com/s/81c12171fa12eb7a6b89

Euge!

Important Note:
It's pronounced "Peh-daw-full-ease" for our purposes.

Characters - 15/25 Rather uninspired, but played to my favorite archetypes.

Plot - 15/25 Read like an episode of every 90's sitcom ever.

Setting - 10/15 Established well-enough. A play obviously lacks the detail to win a short story contest.

Creativity - 10/15 Not much in the way of a plot, but excellent jokes.

Style - 13/15 Rather comedic, even if you stole some lines from Monty Python, you plagiarizing bastard.

Grammar/spelling - 5/5 I saw nothing. Even had some Latin.

Overall - 68/100

by **Nationstatelandsville** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:03 pm

Lordieth wrote:When's the next contest. out of interest?

Summertime, probably mid-June.

by **Conserative Morality** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:04 pm

Nationstatelandsville wrote:Summertime, probably mid-June.

Closer to mid-July.

by **Nationstatelandsville** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:05 pm

Conserative Morality wrote:
Nationstatelandsville wrote:Summertime, probably mid-June.

Closer to mid-July.

Quiet. I don't listen to cheaters.

by **Conserative Morality** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:10 pm

Nationstatelandsville wrote:Quiet. I don't listen to cheaters.

Oh, what's this here? It looks like victory.

by **Nationstatelandsville** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:11 pm

Conserative Morality wrote:
Nationstatelandsville wrote:Quiet. I don't listen to cheaters.

Oh, what's this here? It looks like victory.

It looks like cheating and lies! [/neverreadyourstory]

by **Conserative Morality** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:15 pm

Nationstatelandsville wrote:It looks like cheating and lies! [/neverreadyourstory]

Oh, you didn't read it? You really should.

by **Nationstatelandsville** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:17 pm

Conserative Morality wrote:
Nationstatelandsville wrote:It looks like cheating and lies! [/neverreadyourstory]

Oh, you didn't read it? You really should.

(grumbles)

I won that contest! First place was a two-faced bastard, and second place was a Jew!

by **Conserative Morality** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:21 pm

Nationstatelandsville wrote:(grumbles)

I won that contest! First place was a two-faced bastard, and second place was a Jew!

Two-faced bastards are the best at writing stories. We're already good at being someone else.

by **Norstal** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:52 pm

Conserative Morality wrote:
Nationstatelandsville wrote:Quiet. I don't listen to cheaters.

Oh, what's this here? It looks like victory.

You're going to brag about that forever aren't you? :\

Also, where's Tez? Because if he's not here, I can be your back-up judge.

by **Nationstatelandsville** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:54 pm

Norstal wrote:
Conserative Morality wrote:Oh, what's this here? It looks like victory.

You're going to brag about that forever aren't you? :\

Also, where's Tez? Because if he's not here, I can be your back-up judge.

No. No, never.

by **Norstal** » Fri May 18, 2012 3:03 pm

Nationstatelandsville wrote:
Norstal wrote:You're going to brag about that forever aren't you? :\

Also, where's Tez? Because if he's not here, I can be your back-up judge.

No. No, never.

What's wrong with me judging? I'm pretty sure I gave out a lot of effort on the last contest. :eyebrow:

by **Nationstatelandsville** » Fri May 18, 2012 3:14 pm

Norstal wrote:
Nationstatelandsville wrote:
No. No, never.

What's wrong with me judging? I'm pretty sure I gave out a lot of effort on the last contest.

Yeah, but you're Norstal.

That's the only justification I need.

by **Conserative Morality** » Fri May 18, 2012 4:20 pm

Norstal wrote:You're going to brag about that forever aren't you? :\

Damn straight.

Also, where's Tez? Because if he's not here, I can be your back-up judge.

He'll be around, I'm sure.

by **Astrolinium** » Fri May 18, 2012 5:04 pm

Conserative Morality wrote:
Norstal wrote:You're going to brag about that forever aren't you? :\

Damn straight.
Also, where's Tez? Because if he's not here, I can be your back-up judge.

He'll be around, I'm sure.

If not, can we hurl him from the Tarpeian Rock?

by **Forsher** » Fri May 18, 2012 5:13 pm

Nationstatelandsville wrote:
Forsher wrote:I wasn't going to enter this, but I changed my minds. Be warned I wrote this three years ago. I'll do some editng (of the spelling) but there's a reason why I chose this text. I've never put it online so I think it wil qualify as new...

Tall and skinny that was Tea Pyd, a girl no more than thirteen years old. She had rough looking skin, short tawny brown hair, green tinged hazel eyes and a bony jaw. She disguised the jaw with a thick woollen scarf of turquoise colouration, hid her hair under a bandanna and covered her eyes with reflective sun glasses. Tea went to Yew College a large school for secondary students designed like a fortified town. Every student wore mufti and today Tea was clad in yellow socks, brown trousers, black shoes, a white skivvy and a jumper that proclaimed 'Haraald II'. It was made of black wool and cotton with the words in red cotton.

Next to Tea sat Rollo Masdin a dreadful cheat. Almost all the work Tea completed he copied out word for word in similar handwriting. His heart was truly stone. Sometimes he would be cunning like a fox and finish the last few words or sentences by himself and claim that Tea had copied him. He would normally play the trick when Tea was stuck on a difficult question or suffering from writer's block making it look like she was stumped without 'his' answers. This annoyed Tea who couldn't always complain that it was he who was cheating.

One day, not long after Tea's grandfather Lucas Pyd had given her a chest of antique draws, Tea wore a jumper that exclaimed, 'I'm a cheater and you're on a heater'. It was made by Harson Clothes, a brand notable for their horrible rhymes but exceedingly popular nonetheless. The first period of the day was English the only class where Tea sat next to anyone anymore. Belle Droggard was rushed to hospital five minutes in after sitting on a heater.

It was not until Tea got home that she realised what her jumper said, however, she didn't link it to Belle in any way other than coincidence. The next day she wore another jumper except it said 'Go to be bed you're a pain in his head.' Terrence O'Dil fell asleep during class and Rollo Masdin exclaimed, "Sir, Terrence is annoying me." As with before, Tea passed it off as coincidence.

On Friday, Tea took a jumper saying 'I just flew in from Texas, boy are my arms tired'. Once at school Madeline asked Tea a question. "Can I borrow your jumper?"

"Sure," Tea replied.

Madeline wore the jumper and was soon very sore in the arms department and plagued by questions about Texas. Neither were explainable as Madeline had no recollection of having visited Texas.

Once Tea got home she looked at her jumper and clicked. Her jumpers made things happen to the people wearing them or the people near them. The thought aroused Tea's curiosity so much that she rushed to the draws and pulled the first one over her head. What she didn't do was read the words: 'Warning. Explosive Chemicals.'

Belle, Terrence, Madeline and Rollo carried the coffin and Mr Kao performed the service. A minute's silence was observed through the school.

Ow. Ow. Goddamn it, ow. My brain is trying to kill itself.

Characters - 5/25 Well, the story had names, but not characters.

Plot - 1/25 I'm not sure if you think I'm five or not.

Setting - 5/15 Yes. It's a school. But what does it look like?

Creativity - 5/15 You created something original. Not something good, but something original.

Style - 5/15 Barely functional.

Grammar/spelling - 4/5 Only a few noticeable mistakes.

Overall - 25/100

Hurray! My favourite judge thus far. Regarding your plot comment, I originally wrote this for school, the target audience was probably my teacher. I wrote it a few years ago and replicated it word for word (unless I spelt something wrong).

by **Conserative Morality** » Sat May 19, 2012 2:32 pm

*looks at date*

*glares at GT*

He better start judging soon.

Short Story Contest (Spring 2012) Winners Announced!

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