Fortnightly Writing Competition: NOVELTY (Results)

[Baron]

Let's enjoy the unboxing experience of this New Year by celebrating freshness in all its newfangled newness.  This fortnight we will be writing about something new:

NOVELTY



Novelty is creative and original, and above all new.  Your story could focus on a new beginning for a tired character, a new home, a new world, or a new way of thinking.  Consider framing your story around inventions or discoveries, for they are also inherently new and fresh.  Births, while messy, are also fair game, as are hatchings, evolutions, and deliveries.  Novelty can also be cheap, as once experienced the novelty quickly fades; thus trinkets, baubles, and toys become fertile topics to explore.  Finally, it gets harder and harder to be truly novel as like-minded creators beat us to the punch, so highly experimental and unusual works would definitely be acceptable.  In the end I want you to get out there and push some boundaries, reinvent the wheel, or cheapen your own creativity - we want something fresh and new to read in a couple weeks!

Deadline: 23h59 Hawaii time, Monday January 15

Good luck to all participants. 

[Mandle]

Novelty in the Alleyway

  They met in the alleyway just as planned.
  The woman that had been afflicted by her parents with the unfortunate name of 'Novelty' saw the other lady called 'Laney' emerge from the shadows.
  "You are the medium that goes by the name of 'Novelty' then, right?" asked Laney. "The one I spoke with yesterday?"
  Novelty glanced around at the brick walls and jutting dumpster of the narrow alley and said nothing. Laney stepped a step closer, an attempted grin of her thin, freckled face, a frown forming under her ginger bangs. "Novelty?" she repeated. "Right?"
  After a pause to get her eyes focused on the tall, bulky and, as yet, silent woman standing in the shadow of the dumpster, Laney took another few steps forward on her short, thin legs and said, for the third time, "Novelty, right?"
  "Yes," replied the huge woman in her deep voice. "Why are we here?" And then stepped out of the shadows, revealing her black, slab-like face topped above its high forehead with dyed-yellow spikey pyramids of hair. Her thick torso machined hard with each step as if the massive legs beneath it were hydraulic pistons of quick flesh under their leather-bound thighs.
  Laney resisted her frightened urge to take a step back and said, "You are a medium. At least, that is what you claim. We are here to contact the one that died in this place." Looking up into the dull grey eyes of the towering woman, lit slantwise as they were from the dull yellow glow of a nestled wall-mounted lamp, she continued, "Y-you said you could. I'm a-an... investigator... of a s-sort."
  Novelty was immediately suspicious of the tiny, white, frightened lady. "I didn't expect a midget. Or is that not the right word anymore?" she said, taking three big steps closer.
  "We don't really care what you call us." replied Laney, drawing some steady footing out of the deck of her initial fright from the cards of bravery deep inside her. She had grown up, emotionally if not physically, through all the monickers of 'dwarf' and 'midget' and 'little people'. At the end of the day, she was just short and was here to do her job.
  Laney took a spiral notepad out from her jacket pocket and flipped its cardboard cover open. She took a pen from another pocket, then looked up and gulped as Novelty's boot tips stopped within inches of her own little shoes. Water dripped from a cracked pipe high above in sporadic plops as the hulking black woman and the tiny white one sized each other up and down.
  And then the investigation started:
  "Can you sense a presence?" asked Laney.
  "The money first?" replied Novelty. She needed to see the five hundred dollars they'd agreed on yesterday before she would contact the dead. The midget at her feet took a wallet from an upper pocket of her bulky, beige down jacket and thumbed out a fan of hundreds from its folds, craned her neck up and smiled, "Five hundred right here." And then thumbed the notes back down again and tucked the wallet back away.
  Novelty grinned a wide smile down at Laney and said, "Fine! You know I can outrun and whoop yo' ass if you bail, so let's do this!" Turning her head side to side, crouching down on her thick haunches, Novelty scanned the alleyway, seeking the voice of the spirit that had died here. She put her spread-fingered hands out to each side of her head and tuned herself in. It wasn't long before she heard a voice in her head:
  A voice saying, "It had been a nice enough first date."
  Laney watched on as the squatting black giant spoke again, down at her eye level, muttering, "Yes, I see him. He is a gentleman, and very handsome." and then onwards and deeper as Novelty saw the scene of that fateful date play out in her head:
  "No, come on. I can't order that. Just look at the price." the murdered woman had said from across the marbled tabletop of the intimate booth.
  The handsome man had replied, "Price is no concern when there is one so beautiful sitting across the table from me."
    The murdered woman had blushed. Novelty saw it happen before her own eyes as if she had been there. Laney saw the same ruddy tinge bloom in Novelty's cheeks as she started to tip over backwards in her trance. The tiny detective reached out and pulled Novelty back up.
  Inside her trance, Novelty saw the murdered woman stand by the side of her killer as he paid the impressive bill and then led her down this alleyway.
  Laney heard Novelty's spirit grunt as she was stabbed to death right here all those decades ago. It was time for Laney to reveal her tiny role as a medium that could see the spirit's death and free them as she had freed so many others before. Tricking them into believing they were the ones who could see and hear the ghosts was just another tool in her drawer. It made them listen to their own wounded hearts.
  From her little throat she called out, "NOVELTY! You are FREE! This is how you died. Move on!" and the massive form of the spirit of Novelty Jackson faded from her sight. All was quiet. Laney's job was done, and she looked around with satisfaction in her eyes and started walking toward the alleyway entrance. Although, what had that fading look of creased anger across Novelty's brow been about?  That hadn't been the usual expression of contentment that Laney was used to seei...
  The dumpster Novelty had died behind, and then been discarded in, screeched an inch forward from the wall. Laney stopped and turned back. The dumpster shuddered in place, then dragged a foot or two further and stopped again, tipping forward, and then lifted off into the air and slammed violently into the opposite wall two stories up. Laney's feet felt glued to the ground as the crumpled dumpster ripped back out of the hole it had made, spilling bricks and plumbing and people down onto the alleyway's pavement. It flashed across the gap and smashed right through a window on the opposite side.
  The sounds of screams and burstings of gas mains erupting whooshing up in flames, lighting the foggy air above in orange flashes, fell behind Laney as she rounded the corner out of the alleyway on one heel and ran and ran down the pavement of Fifth Street, buildings collapsing behind her, the dumpster pulling in a mass of rubble around it as it burst back out of a destroyed building on its ramping-up mission of revenge.
  Well, this was new.

[Sinitrena]

I didn't have a lot of time, so just a quick one from me. Self-imposed 500 words challange (500+3 for the title).

----------------------------------------------------------

An Endless Battle

The helicopter circled above the battlefield, its motor roaring with the screams of the victims. Underneath, hundreds of craters, distributed unevenly over the fields, spoke of past missed attempts towards the target.

A burning smell still lingered in the air, the smell of burned food and past tears, but the pilot tried to ignore it. Higher and higher the helicopter rose into the sky, circling in erratic lines above the target until it spotted the cave.

Slow at first, buzzing and chugging, it closed in on the deep, dark cave, its entrance opening and closing at random. It waited for the opening, waited for the moment to strike, to drop its bomb, to fly right at it, even at the risk of its own well-being.

But what had to be done had to be done. There was no way around it. The battle had already raged far too long, the combatants were already far too exhausted to keep on fighting, and still, fighting they kept, for the mission was too important, the consequences of failure too dire.

And then the pilot could no longer hesitate and the helicopter dove towards the open cave, now in a straight, an unmistakable line.

But in the last second, the cave entrance closed on the pilot again, the defender rolled the two-part gate over the mouth of the cave and the helicopter bumped against the wall. It ricocheted and it staggered and it dropped its load onto the battlefield once again, missing its target once again.

The pilot sighed and righted its helicopter, flew back to its station, to take on new load, to take on a new bomb, while the defender laughed and opened and closed the mouth mockingly.

Large, huge, enormous boulders pounded onto the battlefield, smearing the remnants of the bombs this way and that, laying waste to it until there was nothing but devastation, nothing but chaos left on the table while the defender laughed and laughed.

And than he became the attacker. With one insurmountable display of strength, he reached out towards the camp of the pilot, sweeping it from its resting place, scattering the last few bombs all over the battlefield.

Now, only one bomb was left, tightly tucked into the loading bay of the helicopter. This was the last attempt, the last chance.

But even before the pilot could start her final flight, the boulders, so tiny, so cute, with these angry little red knuckles, nearly knocked the spoon from her hands.

The mother sighed again, looking over the battlefield that was once her kitchen table, onto the spots of carrots that already started to dye the finish orange, onto her boy, screaming and laughing at the same time. It was useless. No matter how hard she tried, the baby just wouldn't try new things.

The helicopter dropped the last bomb back onto the overturned bowl, while the baby boy started to lick his fingers, seemingly enjoying the taste of the carrot mash. The mother sighed again.

[Baron]

Novelty is short but sweet, which is a novelty unto itself in terms of the FWC.  I haven't seen such concise entries since our 144 word contest last year.  Given that our adoring public seems averse to slogging through long reads, I am 100% certain that these short short stories will garner an unusual volume of votes.   

It is now voting time, my good friends.  Why, I bet you could read both entries twice over in 5 minutes - it'd hardly be worth your while NOT to vote!     

Feedback as always is appreciated by our budding literary stars, as it keeps them grounded and focused on next steps. 

Remember, to the winner go the spoils.  So if you don't want the next contest spoiled by an undeserving winner, get in there and vote now! 

[Mandle]

Feedback:

Sini:

Spoiler

When I first started reading through the story and realized around the point that the gate kept opening and closing that it wasn't the real world, I thought that the twist was gonna be that it was all just a computer game, with a child bouncing a helicopter off of the difficult gateway to the next side-scrolling level. But it turned out to be something VERY way much more charming. Your story would have gotten my vote over mine even if I'd been just a bystander reading both stories. Excellent story!

[close]

[Sinitrena]

Voted.


Mandle:

Spoiler

Your story is good, very good, actually, with a nice "Sixth-Sense"-like twist. It comes together great, the characters are interesting enough, the twist works - - And then we get the line "Although, what had that fading look of creased anger across Novelty's brow been about?" and it just becomes comlpetely random. We get utter destruction, but no explanation at all. I read the story again once I reached the end to figure out what went wrong, why this time was different for Laney, and I just couldn't find anything. It also doesn't add anything to the story; actually, it feels like it was just added to better match the topic (though I think the story fits well enough without it.) Good story, strike the last paragraph and two sentences from the second to last and it would feel more complete, rounder.

[close]

[Mandle]

Voted.


Mandle:

Spoiler

Your story is good, very good, actually, with a nice "Sixth-Sense"-like twist. It comes together great, the characters are interesting enough, the twist works - - And then we get the line "Although, what had that fading look of creased anger across Novelty's brow been about?" and it just becomes comlpetely random. We get utter destruction, but no explanation at all. I read the story again once I reached the end to figure out what went wrong, why this time was different for Laney, and I just couldn't find anything. It also doesn't add anything to the story; actually, it feels like it was just added to better match the topic (though I think the story fits well enough without it.) Good story, strike the last paragraph and two sentences from the second to last and it would feel more complete, rounder.

[close]

Spoiler

I totally agree. I guess I'm just a sucker for mass supernatural destruction, but it wasn't needed in this story. Glad you enjoyed the main point though.

[close]

[Stupot]

I've voted.

Both stories were short and sweet, each with their own great twist I didn't see coming.

Spoiler

My vote went to Sinitrena in the end as I really liked the main twist. I could really imagine it as little animated short.

Mandle's main twist was also clever. But I didn't really get what was happening with the gas explosion at the end.

[close]

[Baron]

Well as you can see from the poll banner it was a near run affair, but Stupot's last minute vote pushed us over the edge: Sinitrena is the winner 3-2!  I look forward to her novel - or perhaps not-so-novel? - topic in the next fortnight.   

As the competition is over I will give feedback without spoiler tags.

@ Mandle: There was a lot going on in this short story with more twists and turns than an Italian road map.  Character names aside, the novelty of having a ghost medium who was not actually a ghost medium and a ghost medium who was also a ghost-releaser (but not a ghost-releaser, as it turns out) was impressive.  There were a few places where I thought overwriting needlessly confused the story ("...an attempted grin of her thin, freckled face, a frown forming under her ginger bangs" - is she grinning or frowning, or is her mouth grinning and her forehead frowning, which means her eyebrows are raised?  "...drawing some steady footing out of the deck of her initial fright from the cards of bravery deep inside her" - the metaphor seems a bit stretched, but specifically does the deck belong to her "inner fright" or the "bravery deep inside her", which are opposing sources of metaphorical cards!).  I, for one, thought the supernatural chaos at the end clinched the novelty prize, but it did leave the story with more problems than it started with - a big no-no when Sinitrena is your primary audience.   

@ Sinitrena: I remember doing this with my kids when they were younger.  Battlefields are merciless places, and ruthlessness is an essential quality in a good soldier.  The trick is to plug their nose, and then stuff the spoon in when they gasp for air.  Bonus points can be accrued if they blow carrot chunks out of their nose before mom gets home.  Fortunately we're discussing your story submission and not my parenting style, so I'll leave my reminiscing there!  I had an alien war zone vibe from your introduction, which worked well given the centrality of the twist to the plot.  I liked the atmosphere of battle fatigue, and the underlying message of how hopeless it is to aspire to be a good parent also hit home.  A bit of proof-reading would have tightened the story up ("...and it dropped its load onto the battlefield once again, missing its target once again" feels tired and lazy, which detracted from my enjoyment).  In the end I found the story endearing despite the PTSD it stirred up from when my son was ten.   

Excellent work everyone!  I look forward to participating in the next topic.   

[Sinitrena]

Thanks for your votes, guys. See you next round, which will be up shortly.