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Weekly Contest #70
The needle trembled in his hand, though at the moment he was nowhere near the state of mind to wonder whether it was nerves or grief that compelled the movement. With his other hand he grabbed the dirty burlap sack from the adjacent table, and stuck the needle between his teeth as he wrestled with the knot.He was regretting his choice in lightbulbs; the incandescent bulbs had been much cheaper, but the orange light they cast made the room seem dirty in an unnatural way, as if the very morals of the air had been defiled. The ragged ends of hi...
Weekly Contest #62
A branch of summer gold, cold and brittle to touch . . .The boy sat in the shadow of an elm, a book between his hands and a dog to his right. The dog was more interesting than the book, but the book was part of Education, and thus impervious to the slander of logic. Nevertheless, the day was slowly growing hot, and a lazy breeze rustled through the boy's flaxen hair, making the letters of the page swim together in a medley of impossible ink.A groan rose softly through the leaves. The dog laid his head sympathetically against the boy's lap, s...
Weekly Contest #61
There was once a time, to be sure, when the occult and the impractical held greater import in the daily affairs of men. And though the texts of the time have fallen into disuse and the old ways forgotten out of convenience, it shares with all things unfashionable the fringe interest of the unmentionable outliers of society. And so did the marvelously leathered works of such minds as Athereos and Yllgread, who was the Star of Winter Dawns, fall into the undeserving hands of frail recluses, never to see the sun again. In such a day, in the ...
Weekly Contest #60
Five miles above the surface of a barren Earth, Eden spun slowly on an axis of aluminum steel. The sun burned brightly on another day's rotation, and from the third auxiliary viewing deck, Adante Rells sipped gently on a steaming mug of pitch black coffee. He was up to watch the Song.The clock on the wall read half past six. Most clocks on Eden were digital, the numerals a calming shade of electric blue that contrasted nicely with the modernistic white of the walls, floors, and decor, but the third auxiliary deck was part of Rells' quarters,...
Weekly Contest #55
Gordon Malthus returned from his morning constitutional looking extremely flustered. Sweat dripped along his pudgy, defiant face, making small rivulets at the tips of his drooping mustache. Again and again his twitching, mousy hands returned to his misaligned golden spectacles, rearranging them incessantly on his bulbous radish of a nose. Henry watched him from his seat on Malthus' porch, a stopwatch obediently in hand. The time ran across it in rapid numerals, which came to a sudden halt as he stopped the count at his employer's approach...
Weekly Contest #50
The dust made it hard to breathe. It was incredible how quickly it had spread in such a small time, as if it had been skulking in some quiet corner, waiting for a chance to attack.He collapsed on the beanbag with a sigh that devolved into coughing. It was a hot day. There was a fan in the corner, with a cable looping out the window to a crank generator on the ground, but it was exhausting to charge and he'd left it well alone as he clambered up the ladder, much to his present regret.He traced a pattern in the ground, not really thinking abou...
Weekly Contest #47
You hesitate, pulling out of habit at the taut string of the basket. He looks at you curiously; understandable, what with your recent erratic behavior, but still a refreshing show of emotion. He's not the caring type, and it's never been like that between you, but there's a point at which mutual well-being is understood to be the path of least resistance moving forward, and you both dread the day that that path becomes unavailable.At about midday, as the altitude levels out and the flames require less supervision, he cracks the silence with ...
Weekly Contest #45
It was on those nights, when the moon was dark and the winter winds blew harshly, that the world seemed most at peace. No shapes stirred in the grass below, and the lanterns of the city did not move, did not waver. From the wall, you could hear no sound save the soft tolling of faraway bells, and sullen whispers carted by the gale, and the frozen breath of the guardsmen mixed pleasantly with the thick smoke of their cigars. They were the guardians of the freedom of Man, and their eyes were as sharp as the cold."Be snowing soon," grunted the ...
Weekly Contest #44
Somewhere in the deepest recesses of the common imagination, clustered behind the sphere of memory and more often than not entwined with the smell of autumn rain, is a collection of unborn stars. The technicalities, being centuries beyond our time, would be certain to bore you immensely, though it is safe to tell you that exactly seven years after their discovery, this rarely frequented zone of the human mind brought yet another frenzy to the academic media.In a lab just south of greater Stockholm, a grad student with an unhealthy preference...
Weekly Contest #43
On a humble street in the less interesting regions of Ans, Herbert Uen looked cautiously over the counter of his shop to observe a most curious clientele. They had congregated near the far wall, where the only decor of interest was a mural of a goldfish, and there were enough of them now massed that Herbert was beginning to suspect trouble. As the owner of a rescue center for the neighborhood strays, he wasn't the most accustomed to this sort of thing, but he'd read a few stories in the newspaper, so slid out from behind the counter with a p...
It was the opposite of a life of glamour. Today, like yesterday, the smog drifted high before sinking into the muggy streets, and through the flimsy fabric of the cloth across his face the young man choked on the fumes of societal progress, feeling dimly miserable and wondering if he had the right to be.What was certain was that he had not seen the sun in two weeks, now, and there was no sign that the pattern would soon be breaking. In the embrace of the city, his skin had turned first pale, then sallow and tinged with gray. He was seventeen...
Weekly Contest #41
It began with the sound of footsteps. They were sharp, outlined in dazzling clarity by the sleek texture of the granite floor, and approached in a gradual crescendo of professional poise. When their owner appeared around the flawless angle of the corridor, it was with all the dramatic flourish of a stage magician, his coattails flapping carelessly behind him until he came once again to a stop, this time in front of a small man who nodded at the sight of him, and snapped closed a golden watch."Not a second too soon," muttered the smaller, "an...
Weekly Contest #40
The evening, like any other calamity, began with much promise. It should first be noted that the Y'vondan was not just any restaurant, but instead the premier dining establishment on this side of the continent. The chandeliers were twirling pieces of art, each one of them worth millions upon millions of the most exquisite jewels, and the wines were peerless to the point of disbelief. It was said that one taste of a Y'vondan cocktail could reduce a man to tears, and this was true to a limited extent. It depended on the sort of man, and whethe...
The First Rail of Ans clattered across the aging landscape of the night. The higher strata of society was asleep after a fine dinner of steaks and wines and pastries with exotic names, and their cars bore a different name altogether. They called it the Jamrian Express, and its letters were seared in gold.At the other end of the train, painted in noticeably dimmer hues as if to blend in shame against the darkness, were the third-class coaches. The running joke was that they had only been added on after the last of the chairs had been allotted...
Weekly Contest #39
He had been gone a long time. Even now, after all this time and all these many seasons, he was not quite sure that he was back. He stood at the end of the world and the edge of the world (for all worlds have an edge, just as they have a center or a sky), and he stood so firmly that the stones groaned and shifted under his weight. When he departed, there would be left in his wake two footprints, left as clearly in the rock as if the hard granite had been dust on a windless moon. Today there was a firm breeze from the north, which forced him t...
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