Fortnightly Writing Competition: Cast Away! Winners Announced!

[Chef!]

Write a story or a poem about survival in isolation.  Whether it be a shipwreck on a desert island or a plane-crash in the mountains or a space captain marooning his mutinous crew it matters not anything can happen.  One lone survivor or a hundred; what matters is their adjustment to hostile surroundings.   

Anything can happen on this uncharted territory it could be a barren beach with a lone coconut tree or an island full; dinosaurs, aliens, ancient tombs or tall sexy Amazon women ruled by a femputer.

This was a pretty close contest but a winner has been chosen.

First place is Baron with 14.63 votes for his doomed love letter


Second place is Ponch with 13.47 votes for his torrid tale of a lost sock 


Third place is Jwalt with 8.62 votes for his poem of paradise without love

[Baron]

I'm all over this like Ponch on Famous Dave's All American Feast^TM.  Stand by for serious casting awaying!

[Chef!]

Ah Baron I knew you would be in this competition, but what of the others?  Will Stupot+ pen another of his epic poems?  Will Ponch write about something else entirely unexpected? Who else would dare to challenge you, Cerno? Wham? or will Kconan steal your thunder once more.. 

[Stupot]

I'm in. But I doubt it'll be a poem this time.

[Chef!]

Excellent we now have two contenders!  Who else has the word-craft to put pen to paper and the guts to cast the dice on a epic tale of cast-aways?

[Atelier]

I've already started something, remains to be seen whether I finish it or not!

[Cerno]

Maybe, if I can think of something.
But if I start another contest, I'm sure my wife will maroon me on an abandoned isl... Now wait a minute...!

[Chef!]

Ha Cerno I think you got a good baseline for your story; hopefully she maroons you with a typewriter!

[Ponch]

If I can find a little time between all my trips to Famous Dave's, I think I may have an idea for this.

[Chef!]

I see allot of interest, ideas are flying around, but we wanna see some stories dag nammit!  We want tales of survival, tales of heroism, tales of betrayal and tales of woe. The table is set lets see what your cooking!

[Baron]

The table is set lets see what your cooking!

Hey, get out of the kitchen till I'm done!  This thing's still only half-baked....

[Ponch]

This thing's still only half-baked....

Mine too. I've got one good bit and the rest needs some serious work. Hope I don't run out of time.

[Chef!]

Only 7 days left to polish these beautiful trophies until I have to give them away..

[Stupot]

I'm still trying to find a good recipe.
Hopefully I can still whip together a simple but effective dish before kitchen closes.

[Chef!]

Nothing... Oh gosh.. We have a story hungry mob building up in the dinning room.  What am I going to feed them, Moon Dust?  Ha. I tried but nooo they want Cast Away's. Only four and a half days left people no more dilly dallying. From now on its production, production, production! 

[Baron]

A LENGTHY LONGING

Dearest Beloved,

   It is with heavy heart that I commit these words to paper rather than deliver them myself directly to your angelic ears, but our separation is now of such duration that I despair of ever again having the opportunity.  Since being marooned on this god-forsaken island these seven years, I have endured many hardships: the searing heat of the tropical sun, the depthless appetite of the biting insects, the fiendish lacerations of the sharp volcanic rock, and the gnawing hunger that coconut, raw shellfish and fermented bug juices cannot sate.  But of all the hardships I have borne, the most grievous and persistent has been that of a lonely heart.

   As you know, I am a man of passion.  I am a lover.  For me, a lonely heart is like an empty soul.    It gapes within me like a wound, a cavernous breach that rends me to the very core.  I am nothing without love, and love, for me, is nothing without you. 

   And so I have brought out the last of my precious paper, and tied a stranded squid to the end of this hollowed crab-leg in order to pour out my love upon the page.  My heart yearns for you to read the words that your ears will not hear: I love you.  I love you like the swallow loves the dawn; like the dolphin loves the surf.  I am a man of passion, and so the message of my lonely heart will not be stifled by the trivialities of distance and obstacles.  I must believe that nothing can stand between true love, between you and me, and so I am prepared to be persistent.  I will put this message in the ointment bottle that survived the crash -yes, the residue of the ointment will make the paper greasy and translucent, but that will only serve to remind you of me and how easily you can see through my motives: for me, there is only love.  The wafting fragrance of the ointment will draw you to my message, as will my lustful pheromones for I will be sure to rub the paper all over my body before committing it to the bottle.  You will find the bottle, and this message dripping with the fragrant optimism of my love.  You will find my love laid bare and naked before you, and then you will understand the depths of my passion.

   I am confident that my brutal honesty will clarify any misunderstandings between us.  Obviously you have misapprehended my intentions; why else would you have retreated up the sheer heights of the volcanic cone where my lubricated skin will not allow me to scale?  Since you were stranded here as well, I have tried my best to lay bare the facts of my character, but you must have misinterpreted my intentions.  I will grant you that over the years my appearance may have become a little wild and dishevelled, but I assure you that up close I am remarkably well groomed.  Obviously my garments have long been shredded away, but as you well know the sun has made my body hair grow at an astonishing rate, thus preserving me a modicum of modesty.  Far from the musky stench that you must expect of a castaway, you will find that I carry the aroma of a thousand blooms: I bathe daily in the oils of pulped flower petals that I have gathered from all over the island.  And fear not for my breath, for I floss three times a day with jellyfish tentacles and rinse with a sterilizing agent that I have distilled from my bughito drinks.

   So my body is ready and willing.  My character, I assure you, is unimpeachable.  My love for you is true, and I am a loyal and tender lover.  When you first arrived on the island, a flower petal floating gently on the wind, I knew that I must not be overly forward, lest I frighten you with my manly passions.  That is why I was sensitive, and concealed myself behind the tree when I accidentally stumbled upon you bathing naked under the waterfall.  You were so utterly certain of your solitariness: I know this because you scratched yourself indecently.  But to reveal myself would have frightened you, so what could I do?!?  When you removed yourself from the waterfall, the water droplets clinging desperately to the gentle curves of your nakedness, and walked straight for the tree I was hiding behind, I panicked!  Of course I was unaware that you had hung your clothes from the far branches of that very same tree, and that my clumsy attempt at escape would shake them loose into the current to be swept out to sea! 

   You were cautious then, and I knew I must be careful to introduce myself in a nonthreatening manner.  I am a sensitive lover, so I thought what could be less threatening than dropping you gently into a haystack of flower petals?  That is why I built the booby trap.  I concede that I did not account for your supple strength and fiery determination, nor for the vagaries of wind velocity and launch vectors: I am a better lover than an engineer, I can assure you!  You were so beautiful as you clung to the lever of my trebuchet, your eyes burning with courageous tenacity and your hair flaring madly at the force of motion.  Your lovely breasts dangled freely, weighed down only by the mass of your slightly oversized nipples as your smooth legs worked the post, grasping for dear life, then climbing purposefully to seize the vines above.  If only I had built myself into the design, I could have been on that post and you could have been scaling me....

   But a lover is persistent, and so I pursued you through the jungle.  You were so swift and flighty, like a naked fairy floating through the undergrowth while I barged on so clumsily.  I am not built for jumping logs and dodging branches, but for loving.  I am soft, although you will find that on the touch of a lover the softness in my body becomes firm.  I called out to you, but in these seven years of silence my voice has crumbled and I am uncertain that you understood what I was telling you: you are my love, and I would hold and comfort you.

   Since then, you have stayed away, and I have been a wretch.  I pine for your company, your curvaceous body, and above all for your love.  I am so lovesick that I have retreated to my hammock for days on end now, unable to muster the will to face my daily regimen of flower petal harvesting, bug brewing and wrestling flightless birds for their precious shellfish catches.  Instead I wallow despondently, thinking of nothing but the torment of love lost.

   How I have dreamed of you, my love, over the torturous duration of our separation.  Sometimes in my mind I imagine that I have escaped this endless purgatory to hold you passionately in my arms.  Sometimes if I have drank too many bughitos I have dreamt that you have come to me in the night, and the sensual caress of your lips on mine melts my hardships like so much glistening coconut grease on my tanned chest and shoulders.  Howsoever we are united, the heated passion of our embrace repletes the gaping vacuum of my empty heart and I am whole once more.  No, I am so much more than whole, for I now have love.  We may be two beings, but twined like so much jungle bind-weed we become of a oneness: we lose ourselves in each other.  Like a spider forged through the collision of two torrid monkeys, our eight limbs thrash and throe as one.  My yearnful grunts blend with the soft echo of your impassioned moans, and now the arachnid is no longer flailing about on the floor but scaling the wall, reaching, groping, lunging for the bracing heights beyond!  And now the limbs clench and we are floating gently through the ether, with only the silky discharge of our spinnerets as a tether....

   And then the glowing embers of our bliss are extinguished by the frigid waters of reality.  You are not in my arms, but a ghost in the darkness fled at my awakening.  I am empty, and my love squandered on a wraith of fancy.   I have made clear that I am a man of passion, but without love I am rudderless.  I am dizzy; I am lost.  Without your love I am no man at all, but an ungrasped fire-hose, thrashing aimlessly in the throes of my own self-loathing.  And then the hammock slows to rest, and I my passion is spent, and I shiver in cold, clammy loneliness.  I have nothing left to give, and even were you to come to me I would have nothing to offer.  I am an empty shell.  If only I could save up my love for you in jars, I could show you an ocean of affection!  But now there is nothing.  I am nothing.  Without you.  Until again you flit through my mind, and the wretched cycle repeats itself all over again, I am a broken and wilted man.  I do not know how long I can endure such hardship.  I beg of you to release me from my torments!

Yours in Everlasting Love,

Dicky

[Chef!]

Our first dish is served let the feasting begin!

[Ponch]

Mine is almost done. Is 8pm GMT, or metric time, or Texas time, or what? I need to know because it's going to be very close indeed!

[Armageddon]

Here is mine.

Plane crashed. Swam to shore.
...
Sail away. Ship saved.

[Chef!]

What time zone are you in Ponch?  I'm on eastern time but I'm willing to extend the end date by a few hours to accommodate people out west.

[Ponch]

What time zone are you in Ponch?  I'm on eastern time but I'm willing to extend the end date by a few hours to accommodate people out west.

West Texas Time (Mountain, I believe non-Texans call it ). I'll aim for your time zone. No worries.

Also, you're not in Italy? I'm shocked! Based on your hat, I assumed you were over in Europe. Heck, you're wearing the same hat as the guy on my numerous cans of Spaghetti-Os. And nothing is more Italian that those!

[Stupot]

Maybe he's from little Italy eating momma mia's special pasta with Big Toenails Tony and the boys. Budda bing.

I'm afraid I'll probably ditch my story. Been too busy to properly write anything this weekend. Alton Towers has taken precedence :-)

[Cerno]

Sorry to say that I won't be in this time.
I had a great idea but unfortunately won't even have time to get started.

So in lieu of something potentially good, have something awesome instead.
It's a long-ish read but totally worth it. Fits the topic too.

[Baron]

Ho ho ho!  I smell a default victory coming up!  I knew I shouldn't have posted my intimidatingly smutty story first: it scared you all off.  Although you'd think it'd be right up WHAM and Ponch's alley....   Won't anyone give me a run for my... trophy?

[Atelier]

Well I have a couple of paragraphs already, I'll try and finish it off before tomorrow. But it will be poop.

[Chef!]

Last day people, we can't leave poor stranded Baron all alone out there.  Surely there will be one last minute contender. If not we couldn't call it a competition we'd have to call it a Fortnightly Writing Challenge.. and that just wouldn't be Write now would it.

[jwalt]

An entry, but may be too little, too late... Untitled...

A sandy strand runs the island round,
Delimiter of land and of sea, of life and of death.
Beyond the reef, now just a speck, the wreck,
A wood ship battered on a coral shore.
How long? Weeks, months, years?
Unknown.
He lost the count, and most of his mind,
When her body washed ashore.
So here he stands,
Memoriam to a memory
Of one so dear, so missed, so loved…
Had she survived, this could have been
A paradise found, removed from
The demands of surviving in the modern world.
There was enough here to live a life,
Water, food, the base necessities.
Their life, their love, their world,
Would have been each in the other,
Could have been each in the other,
On this sandy strand, that runs the island round.
This paradise.
Alone.
This hell.

[Chef!]

Excellent now we have two dishes and a random ingredient

A lengthy Longing by Baron

An untitled poem by  Jwalt

..and we can't forget Armageddon's entry

But encase there's anyone frantically typing away out there we'll leave it open until 12:00 eastern after which we'll have a 3 day vote

[Ponch]

The shadows were deep down here. Above, a wan shaft of light slowly worked its way down the wall. Best guess said it was early evening, but who could say for sure. Half a day had passed.

If I'm not found soon, my mate will be shoved to the back of the drawer, to wait until another sock went missing and it could be paired up again.

I hope the new sock is good to her, he thought, as he lay crumpled behind the sofa where he had accidentally landed this morning when the basket of clean laundry was dumped out to be sorted an folded. We made a great pair, but I want her to be happy. She deserves a better life than I can give her now.

A similar fate had befallen his cousin. Lost at the laundromat, everyone had assumed that he had simply disappeared into another dimension, never to be seen again. A very thorough search of the dryer had been made and no trace of him had been found. It seemed the only logical explanation at the time.

What if he wound up behind the rows of dryers? God of Lint! What if he was still there now! Damp, moldering, forgotten.

I can't allow myself to think like this! The end will come quickly! It has too. I can't lay behind this sofa forever. Sooner or later the dimensional barriers will thin and I'll fall into my eternal reward, where every lost pen and every misplaced set of keys gather to be safe and secure in God's own junk drawer for ever and ever.

And maybe my cousin will be there too. And perhaps one day my wife will join me... one day.

The little white sock steeled itself and waited. He would wait for as long as it took.

Spoiler

Secret happy ending: The next day the dog found the sock and drug him back into the world. He was placed, slobbery but happy, into the laundry basket for the next day's wash.

The end.

[close]

[Chef!]

Good work Ponch,

By the way I stole the hat..

From that guy on the can.

[Cerno]

1st: Baron (made me laugh, very clever)
2nd: Ponch (creative take on the topic and well-written)
3rd: jwalt (sorry, no big fan of poems, but I like your rhythm)

Edit:

1  Lincoln 3.39
2  Adams   2.23
3  Ralph 1

Wha? These numbers add up to 6.62?

I adapted my votes so you go figure it out

[Ponch]

jwalt - 2/3 of a cup of vote
Baron - 1 Tablespoon of vote
Armageddon - 1 dash of vote

[jwalt]

I vote:

1st Ponch
2nd Baron
3rd Armaggedon 

[Baron]

jwalt - 2/3 of a cup of vote
Baron - 1 Tablespoon of vote
Armageddon - 1 dash of vote

It's to be subverting the unclear voting process, is it?  Well then, sir, the gauntlet is tossed down! 

Ponch -2/7 kips of myrrh
jwalt - 1/2 peck of oakum
Armageddon - 4/13 eye of newt

[kconan]

1. Baron
2. Ponch
3. jwalt

[Stupot]

1st Baron - 10 Lords a-leapin'
2nd Ponch - 8 maids a-milkin'
3rd Jwalt - 6 geese a-layin'

[Baron]

Apparently the first post has been updated with the mathematically dubious results.   

[jwalt]

@Baron  Congrats, and I have faith in the results. Afterall, Chef used the accounting firm of Stupot+Ponch to tabulate the results.

[Gilbert]

Aw... Updating the initial post to include the results is perfectly fine, but can you guys not editing out information such as the end-date, etc.? This is for archiving purpose. Now everything is just guess work.

[Ponch]

Apparently the first post has been updated with the mathematically dubious results.   

Indeed. Woot and so forth, old bean.

[Baron]

I accept your concession speech, Ponch old fellow.  And let me assure you that after the rancour of the campaign I am willing to let bygones be bygones and by-heres be by-heres (etc.).  I am magnanimous in that way.   

At any event, I thought word for word you'd beaten me (I was just lucky in my prolificness  ).  Lost sock... brilliant!  Do you draw your inspiration from hallucinogenic drug trips, or do you get it from real life?  (or both?  ).  Anyhow, congratulations to all entrants, and standby for another topic shortly.