FLASH CHALLENGE: October '07

[kailhofer]

The "There Are Things That Go Bump in the Night" Challenge:

It's the time of year. Here In the northern hemisphere, shadows grow long, nights become chilled, and there are whispers in the wind. Is something there, in the dark? Or is it the dark itself, creeping forward, trying to wrap its cold, black tendrils around your soul? Wait, it's just the month of ghosts and goblins, the home of Halloween. This month, I challenge you to create your very best horror story.

REQUIREMENTS: (1) Your piece must be a horror tale with a speculative fiction element; (2) There must be a death, either in the story, just before the story begins, or be clearly implied that it happens just after the ending; (3) Include both a helmet and a hotel/motel room; (4) 1,000 words or less; (5) This is a Rated 'R' or 'M' for Mature Audiences challenge; and (6) The characters and setting must be new, or not previously published in Aphelion. (7) Give your story a title and include a byline for when I post the list of authors. Do not bother sending me a bio. I won't use it.

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 should be submitted to me by PRIVATE MESSAGE, and NOT posted into the thread. If you've never sent a PM, all you have to do is log into this forum and click the 'PM' button at the bottom of this post. That will take you to a special message board, a kind of Aphelion-only email, where you paste your story into the body of the message and then send it to me. You are responsible for doing your own formatting, and for the sake of uniformity, please leave an extra line between paragraphs, just like when you see them in the 'zine. I'm allowing different colors for now, but I'm not going to allow changed fonts or sizes. I want all the stories to display the same on everyone's computer. Please DO NOT send a regular email to me--I don't want to risk a spam filter blocking someone's hard work.

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. So if you wish to join the challenge, post a hello or introduction, or just put your two cents worth in on any of the discussions going on anywhere in the Forum. We'll be glad to meet you.

DEADLINE: Stories should be in by 10 p.m. Central Standard Time, October 25, 2007. The stories will then be posted for voting. Voting will close at 10 p.m. C.S.T. on Oct. 31, Halloween night.

VOTING: Stories will be posted "blind"--without the author's name on them. This is to make things as fair as they can be, without favorites to be played, and allows for anyone to enter, from newbies to editors. Names won't be on the poll for voting, and all the story titles are literally tossed into a hat and chosen at in random order. When I close the poll after the voting week, I'll post a list of the stories and who wrote them.

GUEST ACCESS: Guest votes will be allowed again, so feel free to tell friends and neighbors about the contest and encourage them to read all the stories. We attract new readers each time.

If you feel a second story deserves a vote, you may legally vote again as a guest, but you'd need to do it from a separate network, say from a library of your workplace. Votes are tracked by IP address only, so a guest vote from your same network will change your previous vote to the newer one. Voting for yourself a second time is just tacky, so don't do it.

An example of what may be done follows.


[right]1000 Words[/right]

[center]For the Love of Art

By:
N.J. Kailhofer[/center]


Alex’s eyes lurched around the stone bedroom, searching his surroundings. The dim lamp gave just enough light to show the far wall of the cheap hotel chamber.

Probably just the air kicking in.

The lids of his eyes were heavy, forced down by the exertions of a nightmare that refused to release him, and he lay in his own sweat, trying to come alive. Stretching, he heard the tequila bottle slip through the webbing of the bed toward the unyielding stone.

It didn’t hit the floor.

He stabbed an eye open.

The bottle was in the arm of a black-haired woman--a beautiful naked Latina. Her body crouched at the foot of his bed, curled into a catlike pose. Her eyes burned into his as her left hand slowly slid the clear bottle up her thigh, rolled it over the tight roundness of her belly, and pulled it between her teardrop breasts before holding it out to get a look at its lack of contents. The motion undulated her breasts in a way that focused his attention to the exclusion of all else.

"Swallow the worm?" She casually flicked the bottle and watched it tumble gently across the open space of the room towards the wastebasket. Drops trailed from its mouth in slow motion, creating a cascading galaxy of cactus juice, doomed by the unhurried pull of lunar gravity.

Alex’s brain failed to operate on several levels.

"W-What are you doing here?" he stammered, unable to look away from her body.

She purred at him. "You knew I come someday, lover."

From behind her, a streak of silver flashed up and over as she swung her arm. Too slow to react, he saw the aluminum bat. He saw his body lurch and heard the crunch of his bones breaking, but felt no pain as his body toppled to the rough-hewn, stone floor.

***

Alinda.

Alinda, Isabel, Sofia, and P--What was her name?

Alex’s head throbbed as he tried to remember their faces, hair color, dimples, scars... anything. They were just notches in his belt.

"Whassamatter, Gringo?" She mocked him through the bars. "Angry that I wasn’t so easy for you?"

The hiss of the metal door silenced her laughter, leaving him alone in the holding cell again. His leg ached. The guard, Faron, hadn’t set the bone--just gave him a painkiller to stop his screams.

He should have been able to remember. He learned every inch of them... Every curve, every ounce of muscle tone or softness. He used to know the nape of the neck, how to trace her flow to the breast, how to move his fingers in to accentuate the curve and the reaction. He knew how to make the skin flush with color, capturing it in his mind.

But now every image was erased.

His pallet covered all the hues of flesh, of shame and defiance, but it was gone now, too.

Did any of them survive?

He could remember how he felt when he had grabbed them, laid them flat upon the frame, and then stretched them until they were about to tear apart. He loved the tension of that moment. He knew it was then they would yield to his will, when he would make them his.

The hiss of the door brought Faron.

"Hey!" The guard laughed so hard the rolls of his gut jiggled in a wild rhythm over his duty belt. "You still pining over your long-lost paintings? Or does your poor little leg still hurt?"

Alex shouted, "What kind of place is this, where art has no meaning? Are you barbarians?"

The nightstick crashed into the bars by his head. "You Earthers always think we’re stupid. You come for our tequila, best in the universe, and to laugh at our backward ways. You think that just because the girls don’t wear clothes in our hot little dome, you artistas can just come and paint them up, eh?"

"It’s not like that, Gringo. Marianna is the hija of the Premier."

He smiled. "Law says she can do anything she wants to you, and she’s the meanest one. She's gonna tie you down outside with only a helmet on. All that zero pressure’s gonna swell your testículos to the size of baseballs."

Faron laughed so hard his face began to redden. "That hurt you so bad, you’ll wish you was never born, artista."

***

Marianna leaned her helmet down until it touched Alex’s in the lunar dust, so the contact could carry her voice. His helmet was barely better than a fishbowl, with no air tank--just a gasket around the bare skin of his neck to keep what little bad air he had from escaping.

"I tell you a secret, Alex. You paint one of my friends. Her name was Pilar. You remember her?"

Every inch of his body burned. "No! Please!"

"I saw the way you paint her. You use her own blood to paint the lips."

His body convulsed. "Y-yes."

She smiled. "You cover her whole body with blood. All red."

Her hand pressed gently on his shoulder and then gestured to his left. "You missed something."

Through his agony, he saw at least six helmeted figures in an arc away from him, staked just as he was. He looked back at Marianna. Sunlight glinted off the long steel blade in her other hand.

She paused. "You have so many colors within you besides red. I show you."

The blade plunged into him. Alex choked and convulsed, helpless to watch while his insides sprayed out into the low gravity.

"See? None of you Earthers make art as good as mine. You are spoke number nine, in my piece. You like it? I call it ‘Wheel of Hope.’"

"No?" She frowned. "Ah, well. New turistas come every week. Maybe one of them will make it great."


Even as he died, Alex was consoled. After all, it took one artist to truly appreciate the work of another.


[center]The End[/center]

[kailhofer]

Hmm...

I thought a horror challenge for Halloween might be a nice changeup, but judging from the low number of page views in this thread since Friday afternoon, there may not be as much interest as I hoped. I know I've got a story I wrote this weekend, but I'm not entering it unless there's a good number of others. Doesn't seem right.

Maybe this is a "down" month after last month's "high"?

Curious.

Nate

[kailhofer]

Well, perhaps you should write a horror story about your job, or something equally harrowing, like booby-trap installer. :)

Seriously, best of luck.

Nate

[Robert_Moriyama]

Glass dust ... I hope the workers wear goggles and filter masks...

Miners get silicosis from rock dust. Textile workers used to suffer hearing loss and respiratory diseases due to the dust from handling cloth all the time (viz. "Norma Rae"). Is there a fiberglass workers' syndrome?

RM

(There's a horror story idea for you -- a Kabbalah master creates a golem out of fiberglass dust to take revenge on the evil insulation factory operators. Dunno how to work in a helmet and a hotel room to qualify it for this month's challenge, though.)

[kailhofer]

I'm willing to go with a hard hat being a helmet, even without the face shield.

Nate

[kailhofer]

FYI. So far, I have two entries, one of which is from a new entrant. I have heard of a few more in the works, but they don't always materialize. So, the field is pretty open.

Just a reminder, stories will be accepted until Thursday, Oct. 25th at 10 p.m. Central Standard Time (my time).

Nate

[Robert_Moriyama]

Wasn't sure if I had time to do this one (although I had an idea simmering), since the sort-of-deadline for the November issue is coming up, but I dashed something off last night. The story I wrote is not at all like what I originally had in mind...I was possessed, I tell you, possessed!* I'll send it in tonight after a quick editing/formatting pass.

Has anything else come in, or is it a three-horse race with less than four days to go?

RM

(*This is NOT a clue as to which story is mine. Unless it's a reverse clue. Or not.)

[kailhofer]

Has anything else come in, or is it a three-horse race with less than four days to go?

Yes. ;D

Entries still welcome!

Nate

[Robert_Moriyama]

Only nine more hours to go ... how many entries? Still only three? Are there no Scary Helmet Stories lurking in the Collective Unconscious Mind?

RM

[kailhofer]

I'm proud to say there are five entries, which was enough that I threw my own in there, too.

So it will be a six-way race, unless there's a last minute addition. Some good stuff!

Nate

[kailhofer]

Well, not so lucky for the main character, I see. I've added it to the queue.

Nate

[Robert_Moriyama]

I sent a scary helmet story, too. So that will give a lucky seven? :o

Scary Helmet? Like the protective headgear thingy?

Crap, and I was just about to submit my very original and scary story about a rabid German Shepherd that terrorizes a mother and her son who are trapped in their broken-down car on a secluded farm in Maine.

The title of my story was--again a completely original concept--to be the name of the dog.

Helmut.

(Get it? Hell-Mutt. . .pretty scary stuff if you ask me!)

Bill Wolfe

To some, a Wolfe is a Hell-Mutt. (I blame the Brothers Grimm.)

RM