Fortnightly Writing Competition: DARK FOREST (Results)

[Baron]

Welcome friends!  The last round I hosted was "cozy", but this time I want to get everyone out of their comfort zones. This fortnight we are visiting a place that haunts the subconsciousness; an untamed place full of wild creatures beyond the pale of civilization.  Today we visit...

The Dark Forest



Tradition has it that we have a spooky theme this time of year, but you are welcome to submit any type of story so long as it contains a forest so old and wild that it is beyond the control of humans.  Of course, you are also more than welcome to creep us out with tales of druid sacrifices, witch covens, and sentient trees that strangle the unwary with their roots.

As a short story competition, I'm going to limit submissions to a 2000 word count this time around.

Stories are to be submitted by the time it is no longer Wednesday October 30 anywhere in the world.

Good luck to all participants!

[Mandle]

Working on something.

[Baron]

Working on something.

This is good. Most potential entrants are merely lost in the dark recesses of their own consciousness. 

ONE WEEK LEFT!

[WHAM]

I'm toying with at least three different ideas but haven't gotten more than three sentences into any of them. Will try to make up my mind over the weekend and crunch out a result by deadline.

[Mandle]

Envy of Heaven

Spoiler

      I was out of the van before I knew it.  I'd left the headlights on, but too late now.  Their arcs of intensity faded at the edges, overlapping in the middle to spotlight the zigzag fringe of the forest.  Just off the asphalt verge of the starlit mountain road, between a break in the hairpin-curving guardrail, descended the rough, eroded clay trail I had expected.  I patted myself over, to check everything was in place, and started down.

    The grooves in the path, carved out over years of Spring snowmelt, threatened to buckle my ankles.  I stepped over them and turned sideways to skid down the steeper sections out of inbuilt habit.  It was surprisingly easy to see the twisty way between the pine trunks, even after I had dipped below the fan of my trusty van's lights.  My destination was not far below now, anyway.

    I walked out of the tree line and into the small clearing. On a stump sat a man in a red checkered shirt with a shotgun in his mouth.  His eyes had been squinched shut, but now opened with surprise at my arrival.  At his feet, face partly obscured in the withered Fall grass, lay a dead woman with the right half of her abdomen blown backwards toward me across the ground. She seemed to stare at the ex-bits of herself in a "What the fuck?!" manner.

    The man took the barrels from his mouth and said, chuckling, "Oh, man, did you come along at the wrong time," his mouth dropping into a leer visible even through his dark, unkempt beard.

    "You don't remember me, do you?" I asked.

    He pointed the shotgun at me and said, "Hold up right there, buddy," answering my question.

    "Go ahead," I grinned. "Shoot."

    He took one hand off the stock and gestured to his right, knowing that I had already seen the late Mrs. Harrington at his feet, saying, "You think you can mess with me?  That's their kid over there, one of 'em, anyway... other's back there," and he hooked a thumb over his shoulder.  The twin barrels of the shotgun barely even wavered at me in his single-handed grip.

    "The Mister is to your left," and I glanced over, why not, at the still-gasping Garland Harrington sitting slumped, legs splayed, against a pine, eyes trying to dart around, finding nothing to fix on, guts blown out.

    "What happens if I take another step?  You do me, too?" I asked.

    "Oh, you the cocky one, Brother," he said, with what sounded like grudging respect. "But, I ain't gonna shoot you, not at all.  Take that step and see what goes down."

    I did.  He put the shotgun back in his mouth and pulled the trigger.  The orange spit of the gun blew the better part of the back of his head off in a cone of red and white and fire.  Then, as always, everything froze in midair, then flooded back down, in above his neck, reforming his distorted face into a look of utter confusion.

    "WHA THA FUFF?!" he muffled out around the twin barrels, and tried again.  Same thing happened, of course.  Then again, and he pushed the barrels in even further for a fourth attempt, gagging slightly.

    I held out a palm and said, "Woah, woooah, Tex... Save that non-existent ammo!  You got, like, negative barrels left."

    He took the gun from his mouth and whined, "Whyyy isn't it workiiing?!"

    "You mean why didn't the Abramelin Operation work for you, I assume?"

    "What?! Who the fuck are you? How do you know what I--"

    "You wanked, didn't you?"

    "--did... WHAT?!"

    "You couldn't stand the celibacy bit.  I understand, dude.  Six months is a long time to keep the downstairs pool open for more guests."  I thought it was a pretty funny line.  Against the tree trunk at the edge of the murder clearing, Garland's hands stopped trying to hold in his intestines and his head slumped to one side, his neck giving out an audible crack.

    Somewhere downhill in a thicket, a swooping owl hooted in frustration as its prey rustled underbrush with its furry escape.  Jim Homme's reestablished mouth tried to make words.

    "See," I said, "That's why I had this done:" and, lickety-split, I had my fly open and my boxers thumbed down.  "Yep, flat as shit, eh?  Bet I'd even look good in a slinky dress, no?"

    "You did tha... wha?" he managed, trying to look and not look at the same time.

    "Hey, friend, look... put the gun down and come with me.  You'll figure it out."

    It wasn't quite that easy to get him to follow me back up to my van, but I'll spare you that span of idiocy.  Eventually, follow me he did, back up the clay path, stepping up the bits where tree roots made staircases.  He hadn't left the gun, but didn't keep it trained on my back, either.  This fish was hooked.

    He shielded his eyes against the headlights' glare as we topped the crest of the road.  He looked down at the blacktop and guardrails, saying, "When did all this get put in?"

    "Shut up, Jim.  Step over here and take a look."  And I pointed, as he came out of the light, at my body; brains blown out properly, after the correct Abramelin had been completed, slumped over the steering wheel of the van.

    "See, Jim?  It does work, but you just CANNOT skip the no-cumming bit!  Crowley couldn't manage it either, but he wasn't dumb enough to actually sacrifice the innocents and then off himself, cos he knew it wouldn't fucking work."

    Jim, the doomed soul that he was, raised his gun at me and pulled the triggers.  CLICK.

    I sighed and said, "We could go through the whole dealie of you reloading and trying again, and again, and again... Just like on my dry-runs of this, the ones you always forget about, but I think THIS is just gonna happen, instead:"

    And I let myself, my ritual-fueled essence, expand and absorb his screaming ghost.  Pure evil tasted like a buffet of bliss, and there were a lot more morsels, here and there across the country, and even around the world, still waiting on my menu.

[close]

[Sinitrena]

Nice to see an entry already. As for my own, I had no time to write anything in the last week. And it doesn't look like I'll have much time in the next few days either.
So, I tentatively ask for an extansion to the deadline early on.

[RootBound]

I found some time and energy to write a thing for this one. As good poems should, I'm hoping it rewards repeated readings.

Nocturne

Spoiler

The dilated pupils of foxes, owls, coyotes scenting prey,
glow like shimmering green-yellow suns in the black,
their shine reflecting mere fractions
of what their eyes trap,
the ricocheted photons evincing night-
vision so sharp it can scoff at surplus light,
can spurn as needless the wasted bright
of day.

Meanwhile, we who love sun must
make our eyes sore
to see colors or movements amidst
the darkness, stretching out
hands to scout
hazards, our need for the shown
leaving us breathless as fish on the shore,
unarmored skin displayed
to the wide open mouth
of a realm not our own.

[close]

[Sinitrena]

On second thought, I think I'll be done by the deadline. The story still needs editing and proofreading, but I should be done with this tomorrow.

[Stupot]

The Dark, Dark, Forest.

Spoiler

I sometimes tread
the forest fringe,
and glance between the trees.
The truth is,
we are all drawn to its boundary,
though few would admit.

But we tease ourselves,
dare ourselves,
to peek,
to smell the damp earth,
to brush a drunk limb against it,
accidentally on purpose.
Yet few dare enter.

I do daydream though,
of some day stumbling and falling between the trees,
or of being pushed by someone I trust.

Or if - in a moment of caprice - I choose to
'see what will happen'
and step in,
and allow myself
to be taken,
by the dark, dark, forest.

[close]

[lorenzo]

I'm working on an entry, hopefully I'll manage to finish it today or tomorrow.

[Baron]

We're getting down to the wire, but there's at least two people feeling the crunch so I think a short extension is reasonable.  Deadline extended until Nov 1!

[Sinitrena]

The Path

Spoiler

The Maiden

It was an easy rule. A sensible one. Do not take the path through the forest. The bike path next to the road was perfectly fine, safe, protected from the cars by a line of trees.

It was a sensible rule. And she followed it. For the first year of school, she took the train. For the second, she followed the rule. The third, she got annoyed because the distance was so much longer following the road – rules of diagonals and all that. She actually pulled out a map and showed her parents. They did not budge. Take the path next to the road, do not take the path through the forest.

She was a teenager by now. And she blew up at them. ,,I'm not a child!"she screamed. ,,It's just a fucking forest, dammit!"

They got angry, punished her for her language, for the outburst. They didn't listen to her arguments. They didn't even realize that they treated her like a baby, doubly so by insisting she not take the path and punishing her for speaking up. No TV over the weekend and she wasn't allowed to go to the fair either.

On Monday morning, she took the path through the forest. And nothing fucking happened, as she knew it would. The next day, nothing happened either. Or the next. For a year, she biked through the forest and for a year nothing happened.

She forgot the row with her parents. She forgot the rule.

From time to time, words slipped out of her mouth that told her parents that she took the path through the forest. They looked up worried, they looked at each other, but neither said a word. Quietly, the rule had changed.

And then, one evening, she didn't come home. She had choir practice and it ran late and she didn't come home.

Her parents waited. They called her friends. Then they searched. They drove along the bike path next to the road. They called the police, they drove through the forest. A search party marched through it. And she was not found.

Until three days later, when she was spotted pushing the twisted frame of her bike along the road. Her hair was in disarray, blood glued errant strands together, bruises coloured her skin.


The Prince

There was a prince walking through the forest. A real one. With a white horse and gold at his jacket.

He smiled at her when she biked past. He groomed his horse and he smiled at her and he warned her: ,,A witch lives here in this forest. Avoid her."

For days, for weeks, for a year, the warning to the child was the same. Small additions came over time. ,,I'm stuck here," he said, ,,I'm a prisoner in this forest."

She never stopped. Until she did one evening when she was no longer a child and he didn't groom his horse but was sitting on a log, smiling as he always did but rubbing a swollen ankle.

,,Are you alright?"she asked.

And he just smiled and nodded. And something in her heart jumped.

,,How can you be a prisoner here?"she asked.

,,The witch's spell caught me when I was just riding through. And since then, for centuries I've been imprisoned here." he explained, as if the words had just waited to come out. ,,I am cursed until someone asks for my release."

,,That is all?"

,,That is all."

She did not ask why.

And so she left the path that brought her home and she followed him deeper into the forest. Past fallen branches and over slippery moss, through scrub and over fallen trees, they walked, her bike long forgotten, until the darkness of the forest mixed with the approaching night.

A thick smell engulfed her, from the pine needles and the resin and the sweet perfume she had never noticed on him before.

And she questioned her decision but she did not question him, as it was then that they reached a dark hut in the deepest part of the forest.

It was a hut of gingerbread and candy, of chocolates, of chewing gum, of sprinkles and cake. And it stood skew-whiff and broken, badly maintained and abandoned, alone in the dark. And then, all was dark for her as well.


The Witch

Deep in the forest she waits,
in her hut of sugar and cake,
with them she beckons and baits.
Be careful, hide, stay awake!

A path leads to her hut,
filled with glimmering stones
and with just a single cut,
she lays bare your bones.

All she snares in her forest
from prince to pauper to fool,
Do not dither or rest,
it is such an easy rule.

And once you are in her trap,
her laughter does not mean fun.
One false turn or false step.
Turn around, quickly, run!


The Prince

The girl lay motionless on her side, one arm obscuring her face from view. But even without seeing her face, even when it was impossible to see if her chest still moved, she did not need such outer signs. The girl was dead. And she had seen death before, had spoken with him and visited him multiple times.

But he was not the one to visit her that evening, for he did not come when wickedness and cruelty brought pain to the living, he came when nature brought the same.

There still grew mushrooms where once her hut stood, eating away at the sugar. Now just a ruin of sweets talked of her spell-craft. They had already started to encircle the girl, tentatively reaching for her with their spores. And soon she would be gone and forgotten, impossible to find for the world outside. Or for her.

But still, there was time.

She hoisted her up into her arms and she carried her into the house, she bedded her on a bed of candyfloss and covered her wounds with marshmallows.

She looked through her clothes for a keepsake, and she found a necklace of silver stars on her chest.

Two days and three nights she hunted for the prince, she followed his tracks and his scent and she found him pounding against the barrier that would not let him through, as he so often did.

"Was she the first?" she asked, calmly.

The prince laughed. "You thought keeping me here would save them, when so many of them come wandering through?"

"I had hoped, but hope is futile. I had hoped that you would learn."

"Learn? Learn what?"

"No matter. It is time for you to leave."

"Leave? So you finally found sense, witch? Then lower this barrier at once!" he ordered.

Now it was the witch's turn to laugh and her cackling startled the geese on the fields beyond the forest.

She stepped forward and pressed the star-shaped necklace to his forehead and the memories of the assault filled his mind. Not his, hers. They were dragged through the forest and his life was dragged from him. And through the necklace it was pulled into her.


The Maiden

Without memory, she woke. Without senses, she brushed a sticky mess from her body. Without orientation, she stumbled over leaves and fir needles and cones. Without understanding, she pulled her bike from a ditch.

There was no path to follow, no memory to tell her where she was. She remembered biking through the forest as she always did, as she did every day, and then there was nothing. Something sticky was glued to her body, her clothes, resin most likely, wounds covered her body, she had fallen, most likely, her memory was sporadic and shoddy, so she had hurt her head, so it seemed.

And when she was spotted pushing the twisted frame of her bike along the road, her hair in disarray, errant strands of it glued together by blood, bruises colouring her skin, three days of life were lost to her.

[close]

Now that I've rushed to finish it, now I'm posting it like that! If it feels like it, I wouldn't be surprised.

[lorenzo]

My entry below! I started late, so I wrote it rather quickly, and I exceeded the word limit a bit (I bet it's the word counter being imprecise and not my fault  ).

A New Life

Spoiler

Filthy woods. Filthy, fetid woods infested with flies and gnats. How on earth did she end up in such a place, Martina wondered. Yet their honeymoon had started so well, with those three days on Lake Maggiore! Alberto had been charming and everything had unfolded like in a movie: the room with a view, the sunset watching the reflections on the calm waters of the lake, happy days immersed in a romantic fairytale atmosphere. And he had not even touched her, waiting until she was ready. A true gentleman.
Everything had been perfect, until they had decided to travel to Alberto's hometown.

"What a beauty, right Martina?" said Alberto. "There's no such thing in the city!"
"Thank goodness..." she muttered between her teeth. Her t-shirt glued with sweat to her back, her blister-covered feet slipping on the forest floor covered with wet leaves and gnarled roots, Martina was certainly not in the mood to admire nature.
"Just think, there are more than a hundred native tree species in the Rubicante Valley alone!" continued declaiming Alberto, like a bucolic documentary programme.
"There he goes again!" He was so irritating when he started his boring speeches about trees, animals, the beauty of the earth, with the tone of a TV presenter.
Yet, three weeks earlier, things had been quite different. To think that it was precisely those conversations about mountain life that had fascinated her so much...

She had met Alberto Ferrero in Milan, the city where she had always lived. An inveterate city dweller, more used to being stuck in traffic than walking in nature, she had been captivated by Alberto's simple and affable ways. She had never met anyone like him. Most of her friends were university students or recent graduates from large private departments, a bunch of snooty, snobbish kids who spent their parents' money with alarming liberality, constantly searching for a quick and easy solution to their deep personal dissatisfaction.
Then, Alberto had arrived, a sudden ray of sunshine. Alberto, with his tanned face, his smile that looked even brighter under his dark skin, his muscular body, and his manner without pretence. She was immediately captivated by him. The evenings she used to spend with other students in the city's trendy bars had turned into long walks with Alberto.
Alberto was in Milan dealing with paperwork concerning a bereavement in the family, but he came from a small valley in Piedmont and rarely travelled to the big city.
A shy, unassuming man, he had not wanted to meet her friends to avoid making a bad impression. "They are cultured people," he said. "What do they have in common with a simpleton like me?". But it was precisely his simplicity that had attracted her so much.
And then she had fallen in love with the tales of his land, the Rubicante Valley, described as an enchanted, wonderful, unspoilt place. Alberto had an almost motherly bond to his land and was able – through his simple, unpretentious words – to paint a vivid picture of these places. It was all so fascinating!
Martina, accustomed to the daily grind of the big city, would never have imagined that such beautiful, immaculate lands could exist in the region next to hers.
"It is a unique place," Alberto recounted, his voice a whisper of reverence to those lands so dear to him. "A valley enclosed between two calm rivers, surrounded by magnificent forests and high mountains that protected it from the outside world, from wars, from worldly corruption. Its fertile land produces everything you need, the forests are full of game, and up there you can live a simple existence, far from worries, and happy. What we have, no one can ever take away from us. For centuries we have avoided all the problems that have plagued the rest of the country. It is a magical place".
Martina, almost hypnotised by these stories, had soon fallen in love with Alberto, despite the age difference. Within a few weeks, they were married and thinking back, Martina still couldn't quite understand how it had happened. Those days seemed to have disappeared from memory, carried away by a sudden whirlwind of happiness. It had been her first true love, as intense as only inexperienced youth can feel.
Alberto made her promise to spend the honeymoon in his lands and Martina happily agreed, eagerly to visit those magical places she heard so much about.

And now here they were, two newly-weds, sweating in mud, covered in blisters and insect bites. The much-dreamed Rubicante Valley had turned out to be a nightmare for Martina. The inn they were staying in was an ugly cube covered in plaster, with small windows set into thick walls and rooms that resembled burial recesses rather than the luxury hotel rooms she was used to when going on holiday with her parents.
The locals weren't much better. They seemed poorly dressed, boorish peasants speaking an incomprehensible dialects. They made her immediately miss her friends from Milan who, as shallow as they were, had at least some shared interest with her! These people, however, seemed have no other topic of conversation than hunting, gathering, and harvesting.
And Alberto... Alberto was like a pig in the mud! Where was that charming man who had bewitched her with his sincere ways? Suddenly he seemed to have been replaced by a crude mountain man who, like a snake shedding its skin, had revealed his true nature once surrounded by his fellow men. And to think that she had married him, despite her parents' warnings! She had scoffed at their worries as petty bourgeois concerns, but now she saw how right the were. What an idiot she had been!

"Shall we go back?" whimpered Martina, seated on a smelly rotting log. Compared to that forest, even their room at the inn seemed cosy.
"Why, you don't like the forest?" said Alberto with a gentleness that felt feigned.
"No!" she burst out. "I can't take it any more! Look at my feet," she said removing a boot to show him her blistered sole.
"Poor darling! I told you to wear socks with your boots."
"You didn't tell me, though, about all these gross flies! My face is full of bites, I have gnats splattered all over my skin. You didn't tell me about the disgusting stench emanating from these woods! I can't take it any more! I can't!". Martina realised she was having a fit, but did nothing to stop it. She felt so childish, but she could not stop sobbing.
Alberto sat down next to her and surrounded her tenderly with his muscular arms, wrapping her in a warm embrace.
"You're right, darling. It's my fault, I should have known you weren't used to it. I was selfish."
Patiently, Alberto bandaged her aching feet after covering them with cream. He kissed her gently on the head and the girl suddenly remembered why she had fallen in love with this rough-looking man.
"The smell in the air is the humidity," Alberto explained quietly. "I'm afraid it's going to rain soon. It's like that in these mountains: every now and then there is a downpour, but it's short-lived. Unfortunately, we have strayed too far from the town to go back, but I know a place nearby where we can take shelter until it stops raining."
Alberto helped Martina – now calm but with eyes still reddened – up, and they set off again through the pines, while the sky showing through the trees grew darker and darker, furrowed by gloomy clouds.

The air became colder, as the first drops of rain began to filter through the tall foliage. The ground was getting steeper and the humidity made it difficult to breathe. After walking for half an hour, the pine trees began to thin out, revealing far in the background a high rock face extending beyond the treetops.
The unpleasant stench of dampness and rotten vegetation had become even more intense and had an aftertaste of rotten eggs, almost causing Martina to retch. Where the hell did that stench come from?, Martina kept asking herself, increasingly tired and disoriented. It certainly could not be the dampness of the woods, as Alberto had said. The smell kept increasing the more sparse the woods became. With relief she noticed, however, that the flies had finally decided to leave them alone, a thought that made Martina laugh to herself: maybe they too must have been disgusted by the stench! Or perhaps it was the rain, which was beginning to beat heavily on their heads, that had made them run for cover.

As if crossing an invisible border, the forest abruptly ceased, giving way to a high, impassable-looking rock face. The only trees visible now were skeletal. The area appeared barren and bare: only a huge wall of rock towering above their heads.
"Look Martina, salvation!" Alberto was pointing to a spot in the rock face. "Just one final effort and you'll be able to rest."
Through the thick rain, Martina had not noticed some crude constructions embedded in the rock, ancient dwellings carved into the hard material, with openings like black gaping mouths.
"Nobody knows when they were built, people say they existed before the creation of the world", explained Alberto as they took shelter in one of the small dwellings, the rain almost deafening.
Under the cover of the rocky roof, Martina suddenly noticed how beneath the noise of the rain there was a quieter one. A faint white noise, an insistent hum like the sound of a broken radio.
It was only when they pushed further into the ancient dwelling, through a narrow, dark corridor carved into the mountain, poorly lit by Alberto's lighter, that Martina realised where the noise was coming from.
Flies, hundreds of flies were swarming madly, banging on the narrow walls of the corridors.

At Alberto's insistence, they went further into the artificial cave. "Wet as we are, we have to find a place to light a fire and dry ourselves".
Martina felt as she was about to have another fit. "I can't stand it here," she gasped.  "This oppressive darkness, the flies... I... I can't breathe!"
"Would you rather catch pneumonia? Look at the rain out there!" blurted Alberto, irritated, his face suddenly appearing old and covered with wrinkles in the light of the lighter. "So much fuss over a little smell of sulphur."
They descended deeper, into dark corridors that penetrated through the bowels of the mountain. Alberto moved confidently, as if he had traversed those paths many times. The flies were again a constant, thick presence, with their fat, dark bodies covering what little light came from the lighter. The smell of sulphur had become so intense that Martina struggled to breathe, nausea gave her bouts of dizziness that left her disoriented in that cramped and oppressive space. She felt she was about to faint, could no longer stand, as they descended lower and lower.

Martina woke up on the dirt floor, inside a circular room carved in the rock, poorly lit by a few candles. A deafening buzzing sound seemed to vibrate from the very essence of the room. Next to her, she recognised Alberto.
In the middle, a table carved into the stone separated them from a figure seated on a crude pew, the man an indistinguishable silhouette in the darkness.
"You finally woke up," said Alberto in a sarcastic voice. "It's not nice to keep our guest waiting."
"W-where are we?" she stammered.
"Remember Martina, when I was telling you about the Rubicante Valley, how it remained a peaceful and idyllic place for centuries, without war or destruction? Well, you must know that some things don't just happen. No, sir. There is no such thing as luck. Maintaining peace requires, shall we say, a little sacrifice."
"Sacrifice?"
"Our Lord left one of his sons here, for us, to protect us. But, poor thing, he too needs nourishment, don't you think?"
Alberto drew a candle closer to the table, revealing the occupant of the pew.
His face, if one could call it that, was a milky, pulsating cocoon, with silky filamentous threads connected to the rest of his body. A dark gash started to widen from his grotesque head and flies, thousands of flies, began to fly out of it, heading towards the girl. Martina closed her eyes.

That year the crops of the Rubicante Valley were lush and the game abundant. The land seemed to be regenerated with new life.

[close]

[Baron]

My apologies for the delay. The contest is now closed and it is voting time. We have a whopping five entries this round, so we're moving to a multi-vote format in order to share the love around.  All voters have 10 votes to share around, no more than 5 per entry. No fractional votes - my tender brain can't handle the maths right now. Votes are to be posted in this thread, preferably along with feedback - we critique because we care.

Here are your entrants:

Mandle with Envy of Heaven
Rootbound with Nocturne
Stupot with The Dark, Dark, Forest
Sinitrena with The Path
Lorenzo with A New Life

Voting deadline is Wednesday November 6, with results to be announced the following day. Good luck to all participants!

[Mandle]

I'm on my phone on holidays, so just votes for now:

Spoiler

Rootbound: 1
Stupot: 2
Sinitrena: 3
Lorenzo: 4

[close]

[Sinitrena]

Amazing - 5 entries, and 2 poems (3, if you count the one included in my story), that's a very poetic round!


@Mandle:

Spoiler

A bit purply at times, but not so much so that it gets distracting. The plot is a bit difficult to fully grasp: an attempt by someone to reach a higher plane of existance, but in a very evil manner - and a narrator who did achive it. This makes it difficult to understand the meaning of certain events while thy occure, and they only become understandable later. So this is a story that might need re-reads. My favorite this time around.

[close]

@RootBound:

Spoiler

Poetry is always nice to see arround here. Of course, poems don't need to rhyme or offer a clear rhythm, but this one doesn't seem to have any structure (except for a content based one). There are some rhymes in the first stanza (night-light-bright) but it more breaks the bit of strusture there is then add to it - needing to split up night vision to create the rhyme makes it choppy to read. The plot is a simple comparisson between us humans and the animals of the forest, especially concerning the reaction to darkness. It offers a nice visual for both the animals and the stumbling, fumbling human, though.

[close]

@Stupot:

Spoiler

A second poem in just one round! This one offers a bit more rhythm. And a bit of a mystery: What is so frightening about a forest (except maybe its inherent danger)? It's a nice duality between wanting to avoid the forest and yet being drawn to it. Nicely done.

[close]

@lorenzo:

Spoiler

This is very well written. I copy and pasted it into my writing program, which told me you were 84 words over the limit (might vary by program, of course). Considering how descriptive the whole text is, I think it would have been easy to edit out those few words. But that hardly matters. The plot felt slightly predictable to me - I don't know what gave it away, but I divined the ending after the third paragraph at the latest. Martina is an idiot, even if you fall head over heels for someone so different from yourself and your usual aquaintances, you don't need to marry after just three weeks! At least visit your fiances home first just once. It's not even clear if Alberto needs to sacrifice his wife specifically, or if it could be any woman (or even man). In short, Martina come across as incredibly stupid and whiny, which is not a good look to give the victim. Alberto, on the other hand, comes across as at least slightly caring, while also obviously manipulative. It's a good story, but a bit of tightening wouldn't hurt.

[close]

Votes:

Spoiler

Mandle: 4 points
Stupot: 3 points
lorenzo: 2 points
RootBound: 1 point

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[RootBound]

@Mandle

Spoiler

There's a lot to be said for limiting exposition and letting information reach the reader through only the unfolding of events. It takes a lot of skill to do that well, and much of this story does that. For me, unfortunately, there just wasn't enough information here to make sense of the overall story, and I couldn't really glean much about the characters either. If all of the story is there, it's a little too obscure. I wish I could piece together more, because it feels like there's something interesting here.

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@Stupot

Spoiler

I enjoyed this. There's definitely a hint of something ominous. I do wish I had a deeper emotional sense of what "allow myself be taken" meant. Maybe that would ruin the mystery, but it could make the "daydreaming" more impactful if we had a sense of just how different that is from the way everyone else feels. It would clarify the stakes.

If, on the other hand, the situation is only supposed to be low-to-medium stakes, then it works well as is.

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@Sinitrena

Spoiler

I'm a bit of a sucker for multiple POV stories where each successive POV reveals more of the truth. It's hard to do well, but this succeeds. This was my favorite of the entries. The prose feels like it could be tightened a little, but that's the only improvement I could suggest--on the whole, I feel like it accomplishes, enjoyably, what it sets out to do. Very good work.

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@lorenzo

Spoiler

I really liked the atmosphere of this one. Making me feel the humidity and stickiness of the forest added to the drama and unease very effectively, and was probably the strongest and most complex sensory experience I felt from any of the entries, which counts for a lot. I sort of wanted the ending to do something a little less heavily-tread than the human sacrifice trope, but it works well enough nonetheless. Definitely a VERY close second in terms of my enjoyment. 

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Votes:

Spoiler

Sinitrena: 3
lorenzo: 3
Stupot: 2
Mandle: 2

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[lorenzo]

I enjoyed how different each entry was! My feedback:

Envy of Heaven

Spoiler

The story is very interesting. It tends a bit towards the grotesque in some parts but that's done on purpose and it fits the theme and characters.
I like that it hints at a deeper story (e.g. Abramelin Operation which I assume refers to The Book of Abramelin?) while trusting the reader to be intelligent enough to figure out the plot and put the pieces together by himself. Cool ending as well.

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Nocturne

Spoiler

I found that it has some very interesting images and I like the juxtaposition between the first and second part, splitting the two worlds (human and animal).
I'm not sure if it tells a short story more than a comparison between the two species, but it's not a negative for me and I appreciate what the poem does.

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The Dark, Dark, Forest

Spoiler

I like how it tells a short story that feels unsettling, but leaving the scary parts to the reader's imagination, which is very effective! I especially liked the line: "or of being pushed by someone I trust", which opens to a lot of unpleasant images.

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The Path

Spoiler

I liked the structure with multiple protagonists.
I don't entirely get the setting, with bikes, trains, TVs, and swearing, but also princes on white horses and witches. The mix of modern and fairytale worlds didn't feel cohesive to me, but maybe I'm missing something here.
There are some good images in the story and I liked the ending.

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My votes:

Spoiler

Envy of Heaven: 3
Nocturne: 2
The Dark, Dark, Forest: 3
The Path: 2

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[Stupot]

I just finished reading the stories. I hope to leave a few comments in due course, but here are my votes for now.

Spoiler

Mandle 3
Rootbound 2
Sinitrena 2
Lorenzo 3

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[Baron]

Well, well, well!    Voting is closed, and it seems we have a bit of a tie. I hereby invoke rule 278b of the FWC Constitution granting the contest administrator UNLIMITED POWER in such a scenario.  Buwuhahahahahahahaah! Who shall hold the hem of my cape out of the mud during my triumphal parade? 

While I bask in the golden light of fortune, let us review where we stand:

Mandle - 12 votes
Lorenzo - 12 votes
Stupot - 10 votes
Sinitrena -  10 votes
Rootbound - 6 votes

I want  you to know that I wrote down my own hypothetical votes before reading everyone else's votes and feedback, and will be adding my ten votes to the fray momentarily.  First, as means of further dramatic pause, a little feedback for each of our dear contributors:

@ Mandle

Spoiler

There are many elements of a good story here, but they are hitched all together like a Frankenstein monster.  I felt the dozens of adjectives in your introduction hurt pacing, but then the story got significantly better as the mystery unfolded.  And then it got dark quickly! But then it got light even quicker - I didn't have the sense it was a fun story before the midpoint. Then it got paranormally weird ... I think if you had settled on any one of these tones it would have made for a strong story, but as it stands it felt like we were constantly veering from one atmosphere to the next at breakneck pace.

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@ Rootbound

Spoiler

The contrast between nocturnal and diurnal animals is clear and well done.  Yes, as a human I feel enfeebled, but night is obviously not the environment I am adapted for - I'm sure the coyote up the tree feels the same I do in the dark. What I'm left wondering, though, is where this comparison is supposed to take me?

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@ Stupot

Spoiler

This poem has a very strong atmosphere. Your narrator flirts with the idea of playing with the forbidden fruit, although instead of fruit it seems to be some kind of perilous pit-of-no-return. I wish you had taken some of that charged atmosphere and added just a bit more meat to the story.

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@ Sinitrena

Spoiler

This story had more twists than a forest path! The intro was a bit laboured - I found myself indifferent to how long she had travelled by which route - but it did establish the menace of temptation. The first encounter with the prince was fascinating, the second one sinister. I liked how the witch was the good guy.  I question how if they Prince has been trapped for a long time and folk clearly fear the forest for some reason, why did the witch ask if this particular girl was the first?

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@ lorenzo

Spoiler

A ghoulish story of human sacrifice - oh Martina, you didn't read widely enough in your youth! The ending was a bit easy to see coming, but the writing was beautiful and I really was rooting for gentle Alberto. I was a bit miffed to find the forest itself rather tangential to the story, but otherwise it was a compelling narrative. 

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OK, drumroll time.  Badadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadada ...

I vote:

Lorezo 3, Sinitrena 3, Mandle 2, Stupot 1, Rootbound 1.

Thus, our final overall scores:

Lorenzo 15
Mandle 14
Sinitrena 13
Stupot 11
Rootbound 7

Thus, lorenzo is our winner! It falls to him to start the next contest (and to walk behind me in my triumphal parade whispering "careful, thou art mortal").  Hope to see you all out again next round!