Fortnightly Writing Competition | The reverse | Now voting!

[Wyz]

This Fortnightly will be dual hosted by AtelierGames and me.
Good luck all!

[Atelier]

Fortnightly Writing Competition: Reverse Writing

Your entries will be valid: 5th Sep - 17th Sep
Your votes will be valid: 18th Sep - 20th Sep

This fortnightly only has one fundamental rule: Your entry should open with a situation (e.g Somebody being held at gunpoint, somebody being reunited with long lost relative), and then the rest of the story explains how the character(s) ended up coming to be in that situation. Entries can be any genre or style, so long as it is written as if you've plonked the final chapter at the beginning.

Entries should be in before 18th September, as voting will then start and last for two days. Trophies may be awarded although nothing has yet been arranged. I'm anticipating lots of great entries! The contestant with the majority of votes will have the great honour of starting the new Fortnightly.

Although perhaps the most important rule of all: Be creative!

[KrisMacDee]

If only 'the hangover' hadn't been written  would fit this theme exactly I got nothing this time but maybe next time

[Wyz]

That's too bad
Well, everybody, this is the half way time notice!

[Akatosh]

I'm still waiting for inspiration to strike. Maybe in the next few days...

[Phemar]

Here's my entry, written in the cryptic code of a drug-induced writing spree.

    Soon time regained control, and I saw my perpetrator towering among me, crimson wind caressing his cape and stroking his ego. The earthly season tasted as salted clay to the prowess of tomfoolery.

    A ponder out in the open toyed among the jelly-green bushes of my small box, for outside the box there lay nothing and no-one ever questioned the existence of the nether-world that tottered in between reality and fiction.

    It was a simple game that many played, and many had played before. A splatter of turquoise ocean wind painted the walls with an eerie silence, but I could hear the screams of blistered sailors castrated before the great leviathan myth that haunted them. But to me it was no myth, as nothing was before the age of reason developed within me.
    Outside, built among the jelly-green bushes of my small box, crawled my Woodstock â€" The great bonfire of old, assembled long before the gargantuan elders reached their time of reason. It was in this fortress of power that we would formulate our arguments as to who was to wield the Cape of Batman, as there could be only one. And he who won â€" may God have mercy on his foes.
    Within the ray of the razor wall prowled the shadow that lurked in my eyes, still long after its light had moved on. Time was quick, and unlike the light did not linger after it had moved on. Confrontation near, an elephantine ivory flash paired to a plum aftertaste struck my innocent mind, and the jelly-green bushes along with the small box in which I lived withered and refused to co-exist.
    But soon time regained control, and I saw my perpetrator towering among me, crimson wind caressing his cape and stroking his ego. The earthly season tasted as salted clay to the prowess of tomfoolery.
    With my eyes tied behind my head, and larks twittering the skylark anthem, it was a simple deal â€" to the end would mean a disturbance. I was not indifferent, and neither was he. Yet he knew I was weaker among the outer circle, though perhaps he did not realize it.

    The game was over, and time had decided to return itself to pythagorean motion. Inside the place of deferment tusk masts and childish men crusaded their wet desert once more. Time is a stream, and today I would wait.
    Tomorrow would the jelly-green bushes expose their secrets? Perhaps indeed.

It's about growing up and watching time fly by and some kind of confrontation by the personification of time or something. Something like that

[Atelier]

Excellent! It's nice to know my hosting skills haven't entirely failed.

Keep them coming people!

[discordance]

You just rocked my world, Phemar. I feel like I've been hit by a truck made of flowers and crack. Or maybe vice versa.

Anyway, here's another entry (kinda long, so take a deep breath first):

The Swans

It is a perfect moment for dying â€" you and me here, together as we have always been, surrounded by the trees and the leaves and the autumn air, a day more perfect than any I have ever imagined. So there is no pain in dying, after all. Life is bleeding from me, but it is the best of life, everything beautiful coming together in this moment, the end.
   Let me stroke your hair now, look into your eyes, for this little time we have left. We can remember all the time we had. All that beautiful time.
   I remember the day I first saw you. It was a month in autumn, do you remember? Sometime in November, maybe. There were no trees, though, no colours like we have now. We were getting off the big boat, coming to the city for the first time. I was only eight years old. I was holding my mother's hand.
   I saw so many people when I got off that boat, but it is you I remember. Most of my memories from that time are vague now, all run together, incoherent, but I remember that moment clearly, like it is happening right now. I was holding my mother's hand as tightly as I could, the rough cloth of her glove was rubbing against my flesh, and I was staring up at the faces. So many frightened faces. I remember the fear in the air. I was so afraid, and I didn't know why. I only felt it in the faces I saw, all towering over me, and then in your face and the face of your brother and your sister, but your face most of all. You had a scarf wrapped around most of it. All I could see were your eyes. Your grey eyes.
   How did we come to know each other?
   We had to. All those months and years in the streets, digging through trash, stealing apples, spitting in puddles. At first I went out alone, but before long I found you with me. After that you were always with me. For days we would stay away from home, finding paths through the maze of alleys, finding treasure in the garbage, colour buried in the grey and brown and black.
   And especially â€" I'm sure you haven't forgotten this. How could you? That day we found a long white feather hidden in the darkness. I picked it up and scraped off a layer of mud and showed it to you. I said it was an angel's feather. You said it came from a swan. I had never heard of swans.
   For a while we wandered, trying to find the thing that had dropped the feather, and finally we came to the river. And this is another moment I can't forget: how it looked at that moment. The water wheel turning slowly, the drifting water and the layer of grime and filth, curling off to where the sun was falling and the sky was burning up. I saw all that, and then I turned and saw you, the light falling on your grey eyes, and they were made of colour too. Bright as stars.

Later you showed me what swans were: white winged gods, long-necked and dark-eyed, strong and eternal. I don't remember when I first heard the story of the two lovers, forbidden to come together in life, murdered apart, and finally transformed into gods, to live forever amongst the stars. Every time I heard it I would think of you. Every time I thought of you I would hear it in my mind, playing out clearly as these memories.
   I thought of you when I moved back across the sea â€" as I was bombarded by education â€" as I abandoned my past and my old life and entered my future.
   There was no happiness in it.
   But why trace that whole tired path now? It was the moments that came after that mattered â€" those moments, this moment, not all the grey places in between.
   I came from school, and I found you again. And after that we were always together, long days and long nights. I knew life was meant to be like this. All those years on the other side of the world had been a mistake. You would be by my side forever, unchanging.   
   And yet I saw how we had both changed. I knew then that we would change again, and again, and that changes could only move us further apart. I thought of the swan feather we found, and I wondered if you could freeze a moment in time. If you could keep it forever in the palm of your hand.

So here we are now, you slowly growing cold, blood from the thin line cut in your throat mingling with the drifting leaves. It pours from me too, and we intermingle, and we are one. I can feel the air holding us in; I know this moment will never be lost, even after we are joined together in eternity, swans among the gods, together in the great sky. One.

[Wyz]

Wow, another great entry! Very nice, keep them comming.

[Atelier]

It's your last chance for entries, as voting will commence tomorrow and last until Sunday! So, if you've decided upon entering, want to enter, or even thought about entering, then please do so while there's still a chance!

Thanks to both the entries so far, they're great!

[Wyz]

Because of the forum downtime I think we'd better move the vote deadline to the 24th.
Anyway, time to vote!

[Andail]

I don't usually drop in here, cause reading all the entries takes so long time, but I just read Phemar's...story...and I'm absolutely blown away.

A great piece of text in the most brilliant beat poetry tradition.

It's so nonsensical at times that it appears to be a bad translation, then it suddenly appears crystal clear for no reason...but full of awesome quotes nevertheless

Good work!

[Atelier]

Oh dear, one day past the vote deadline and no official votes. I suppose in these cases the host (and in this case the hosts) decide the winner. So, Wyz and I will pick one together before this Fortnightly gos on for too long.

Two cracking entries!

[Wyz]

After long debate () AtelierGames and me choose Discordance to be the lucky winner. Congratulations! Your entry intrigued me.

You win the beautiful trophy supplied by AtelierGames and the divine honor of hosting the next Fortnightly.


We also thank Phenmar for his mind blowing entry!

Good luck.

[discordance]

Divine! I guess I'd better hurry up and think of a rule then.