FLASH CHALLENGE: November '09

[kailhofer]

The "Moment of Truth" Challenge:


Once to every man and nation,
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with false-hood,
For the good or evil side;


That's the start of one of my favorite poems, "Once to Every Man and Nation" by James Russell Lowell. The poem itself deals with patriotism and choosing political sides in a conflict, but these words in particular have always stuck with me because they point to a singular moment that each of us face every day.

Do you tell your wife she really does look fat in those jeans, or keep it to yourself? Do you join the protest down by the courthouse, or will you ignore the cause? You found a wallet on the sidewalk full of money. Do you keep it? The woman in front of you at the frat party clearly had too much to drink. Will you do the unthinkable--or would you pull the trigger on the one who did to your daughter?

Everyone faces choices for "good" or "evil" every day. Thankfully, 99.9999% of them involve little things, something which may only take a white lie to cover, but the point is that we're all constantly faced with the choice of being being "good" or not.

Anything this universal can be used to reach your audience quickly, giving you as an author a shortcut you can use to hook your audience or get them to sympathize with your character, as well as a great opportunity to flex your artistic muscles with an internal character conflict.


I challenge you to write a story about moment of truth for your character, for good or for bad, be it funny, heroic, or horrible.

See the example at the end of this post for a possibility.


REQUIREMENTS: (1) Your science fiction, fantasy, or horror story must be about a character facing a "moment of truth" situation; (2) The situation may be serious or light; (3) 1,000 words or less, not counting title, byline, or "The End"; (4) The characters, setting, and story must be fictional and not previously published, even in these challenges; (5) One entry per author; (6) Give your story a title and a byline; and (7) Rated 'R' is ok, but show a little restraint, please.

If, in my judgment, any requirement is missed, I won't post the story for voting. Sorry, but rules are for everyone.

HOW TO ENTER: Stories must be sent by PRIVATE MESSAGE, and NOT posted into a thread. Just click the 'PM' button at the bottom of this post and paste your story in the message. You are responsible for doing your own formatting, and leave an extra line between paragraphs, just like when you see them in the 'zine. I will allow different colors, but not changed fonts or sizes, artwork, or any other embedded or external links.

DO NOT send a regular email to me.

Stories will be posted "blind"--without the author's name on them. All the story titles are literally tossed into a hat and chosen at in random order. When the poll closes after the voting week, I'll post a list of the stories and who wrote them. All entries will then be reposted in the Flash Archive with the author's byline.

Entries from new authors are strongly encouraged. C'mon. Give it a try!

NOTE: ONLY REGISTERED MEMBERS who have posted at least one message may submit a story. Without that one post, the system will not let you send a PM.

DEADLINE: Stories should be in by 9 p.m. Central Standard Time (GMT-5), Thursday, November 26, 2009. The stories will then be posted for voting at 10 p.m. Voting will close on Dec. 2nd at approximately 10 p.m., GMT-5.

VOTING: You must register to vote. One vote per user (that is, per ip address), and authors may not vote for their own story in the detailed votes.

If more than two stories are tied at the end of voting, there will be a succession of one-day runoff votes until a single winner is chosen or the number of winners is reduced to two.

WHAT YOU WIN: Writers get improved short fiction skills, increasing their chances in the marketplace, without the lengthy investment in time a longer story would take. That, as well as bragging rights and pride--there is stiff competition each month amongst some great stories.

LEGAL STUFF: Aphelion will not try to make a dime off you or your stories. Really. We want to see you succeed but nothing about that will line any of our pockets. We love fiction and we love seeing authors get better to the point where people do pay them for their stories. That's why we're in this.

I'll try to do my best lawyer impersonation: By entering this or any challenge you are technically granting Aphelion: The Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy perpetual electronic rights only to post and archive your challenge entry. Aphelion would rather not lay any claim on them at all, but by posting them on a public site, they'd legally count as being published no matter what.

Ok. A real lawyer would have been less interesting. I tried.


Example story, not eligible for entry:


Abomination

By:
N.J. Kailhofer



Blood trickled across the floor, past the cop's black leather shoes.

Ethan hated the blood. He hated the way it edged toward him across the dark hardwood floor, as if it wanted to reach the one responsible.

"No, Detective," he lied, "I've never seen one of them on this floor."

Why did it keep coming here? Why, with the whole universe to go to, did the little bastard find me? Why this city, this apartment? They didn't deserve to be on this planet. None of them.

He looked down at its face against the floor. Blood dripped from its cheeks and from the bent brows above its lifeless eyes. A scarred, emaciated hand stuck out of a sleeve alongside the body, the other arm tucked beneath it. Below its spattered pants, small feet soaked in a pool of its own fluid.

It didn't even have shoes. How do they let them live here?

He looked at his own knuckles. They were raw and bruised.

Ethan swallowed hard. It didn't deserve me.


[align=center]***[/align]


Ethan had never seen a real body bag before. It was white plastic, not black like the ones on tv. You could still see the body inside it, just barely, and all the blood. They left the head sticking out.

He asked, "Why don't you zip it up? Do I have to keep looking at it? I'm supposed to go to the station away from all this evidence, right?"

The detective sighed. "We'll get you down there, don't worry. We're waiting for The Machine to get here. We won't move the body before then. You're still here so things can jog your memory."

I don’t want to jog my memory.

The coroner mumbled, "It looks like he hadn't eaten in a week. Sad when they go so young."

"What?" Ethan asked. "What do you mean, young?"

The coroner looked at him oddly. "He couldn't have been more than six."

Ethan snorted. "Ha! Like you can tell with one of those."

The detective asked, "You don't like little ones?"

Ethan chewed his lip. "I don't care for them much, no. Always running around, shrieking with their high-pitched voices, and half the time you can't make out a word they're saying."

"Running around here?"

"Yeah."

"I thought you said you'd never seen him on this floor."

Ethan blinked. "Yeah. I meant down in the lobby."

He knows I lied.

The detective looked around the apartment. "Are you married, sir?"

"My wife, Kate, died in a fire two years ago. You can still see the burn marks on the floor over there by the body."

"Just curious." The detective nodded. "Ok, let's go over it one more time."

"I already told you I killed it. Why do we have to keep going over it?"

Ethan studied the floor. He remembered that moment, his fist cocked back. He might have found another way. No! That wasn't right. I couldn't. I had to hit it.

"Tell me again how it went down."

I had to make a choice. It or me.

A cacophony of sounds and images flooded Ethan's mind. Its crooked open mouth with all those little sharp teeth inside. Long, skeletal fingers reaching for him. The horrible screeches when he hit it. The feel of his hands as they pounded on the thin layer of flesh outside its skull. That last gasp as it tumbled to the burned floor.

"It came at me. It wanted my food. I had to do something. I had only enough for me. I had to make it stop."

The coroner was taken aback. "You were going to let him starve so you could eat? What the hell is wrong with you?"

Ethan glared at him. "What? I should starve myself so some alien thing can live? To hell with that."

There was a beat pause.

The detective asked, "What? He's not an alien. That's a little boy."

Ethan shook his head. "Are you on something? That's a damn alien."

The detective looked over at the coroner, who just stood there with an odd expression, and then back at Ethan. "It's not an alien."

The detective held out a photo. "He had this picture in his pocket of him with some other boys. Other human boys. Date stamped two years ago."

Ethan looked close. It was a picture of three of them, wrestling on somebody's couch. The two others were normal kids all right, but the middle one was the alien. Its eyes weren't right, skin too mottled, nose a little too flat, and its ears stuck out too far on either side of his head. Its ratty hair was that sickly orange color.

Ethan paused. It was smiling, like it was truly happy--like someone loved it.

How could that be? Even Kate couldn't have loved a thing like that, and she had a bleeding heart for every little cause.

Could it have known her? She babysat for all those kids. Could she have taken one in while he was at work? No, she only took in human kids.

Ethan remembered the scars.

The fire! He looked again at the photo, trying to work it out. She went back into the apartment until all the kids were out. The smoke killed her. If it was there, it was burned. Maybe badly burned... Disfigured.

"Human?" he whispered. "Oh, my God!"


[align=center]***[/align]


The whir of the drill against the child's skull jerked him out of his thoughts. The coroner inserted a long probe into the boy's head and connected it to a sinister-looking box with readouts all over it.

Ethan barked, "Hey, what the hell are you doing to him?"

The detective raised an eyebrow. "The Reanimator is standard procedure. With a death this recent, we should be able to question him for about thirty seconds."

They threw the switch and the lifeless eyes focused on Ethan immediately. His head cocked to the side.

"Why'd you hit me, Daddy?"


[align=center]The End[/align]

[kailhofer]

This one is going to be tricky in a short short format. Usually stories of this type require a lot of character development so that the reader can anticipate the "moment if truth" and develop his own opinions about what the hero should/will do. That often requires novel length. Seems to me the real trick will be developing a well rounded character in a very short amount of time.

Tricky? It's supposed to be hard! Tricky should be a walk in the park for you lot.

All I can give for advice from the 3 stories in so far is to take all the shortcuts you can to establish the character, then focus on a singular moment/event, either before, during, or after the moment of truth. That's all you'll have space for.

[kailhofer]

Now seven stories in so far, with some excellent ideas.

Plenty of room for more...